Mercyhurst receives NCAA President’s Award for academics

Megan McKay, Staff writer

The NCAA has released their list of honorees for the President’s Award for Academic Excellence. It is awarded to Division II schools that have achieved a four-cohort Academic Success Rate of 90% or higher. This is the 12th year the award has been given out. 44 schools earned this honor including Mercyhurst University. The NCAA and the federal government measure time to graduate within a six-year window of first-time enrollment. Thus, the graduation rates for the 2012-2015 cohorts would have been reported from 2019 to 2022. Mercyhurst was the only school in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) to receive the honor. Laker student-athletes should be proud of their hard work to become distinguished by the NCAA. Student-athletes have shown skills in their prospective sports and in the classroom that have challenged them to excel and even outperform the general academic population by 8 percentage points. By achieving such high academic excellence it attests to the overall well-rounded student-athletes being brought to Mercyhurst. With this year’s success, Mercyhurst is headed in the right direction, to continuously be honored by the NCAA as a school with the recipe for both athletic and aca-demic success.Assistant Vice President for Athletics, Brad Davis described the accomplishment saying, “This is a huge honor for Mercyhurst and speaks to the academic commitment of our student-athletes. Mercyhurst’s 700 student-athletes continue to excel in the classroom, on the field and in the community. With the help of our faculty and staff, we have led the PSAC in academic performance in six of the last seven years. This fall, our student-athletes had a 3.4 GPA, which is higher than the university’s average. An incredible 119 student-athletes had a perfect 4.0 GPA.”The NCAA President’s Award is clearly an overall testament to the hard work, commitment and dedication of athletes achieving academic excellence. The skills athletes have demonstrated during the fall semester to maintain GPA’s above the university average while still participating in team endeavors is very impressive. It is without saying that the support from the Mercyhurst community is what has helped the athletes achieve this prestigious award. Without the faculty, coaches, and students trust in the mission of Mercyhurst, success would not have become this evident.