Along with being Associate Dean of the Constantin College of Liberal Arts, Dean Andrews is also the faculty athletics representative of the University of Dallas. Now, many of the readers may wonder what a faculty athletics representative is, or be surprised that we even have a faculty athletics representative.
When asked about his role, Dean Andrews said that the role of faculty athletics representative is stipulated by the NCAA. It is required that every school have such a representative, who must be chosen from the school’s faculty.
Dean Andrews said that the representative specifically must be someone who is actively teaching in the classroom or active on campus. He said that it should be someone who is really interested in athletics and who is capable of sitting between the two worlds of academics and athletics.
There are sometimes difficulties because faculty members can be too demanding, even when it is for a good reason, and there are sometimes athletes who do not take their studies seriously. The job of the faculty athletics advisor is to keep the conversation flowing in both directions.
As part of his job as representative, Dean Andrews helps the NCAA to survey the student athletes. He is responsible for reaching out to the students, scheduling times for surveys and gathering the information to send back to the NCAA.
Dean Andrews said that surveying the students is very familiar territory as it involves statistics. He enjoys seeing and understanding how the surveys are made and the questions that are asked.
The role of faculty athletics representative is appointed by the president of the university. Dean Andrews was not originally interested in the role, having not been a student athlete himself. However, one of his son-in-laws was a basketball player at the University of Dallas, and he sparked Dean Andrews’ interest in the athletic department.
When the spot opened up for the role, he became interested in it. He said that there was some confusion in his appointment–there had never been a transfer before because of the newness of the role.
However, in the end, Dean Andrews was appointed to the position by President Sanford. He said that in the future there will be attempts to formalize the criteria and requirements for the role so that there will not be further difficulties in the appointment of the next faculty athletics representative.
While the role is not particularly difficult in its workload, he really enjoys the interactions it allows him to have with the student athletes here at the University of Dallas. He said that it is always a wonderful feeling to have an athlete come into his office with a problem and be able to help them work out a solution to the problem and move forward with that solution.
The athletics side of the University is not a world that many of the faculty know about, and Dean Andrews is grateful to participate in that world, even if only in a tangential way. He said that he has realized how much there is going on in the life of a student athlete and that he is glad to be able to see that side of their lives.
Overall, Dean Andrews said that being faculty athletics advisor has been a great experience for him, and I am sure that the many student-athletes that he has helped and guided would say that he has done a wonderful job.