» Student Success » Academic Support
The Student-Athlete Success Program (SASP) is designed to assist student-athletes in their academic journey at Northwest while also assisting in building foundational skills that are transferable to their time post-graduation. The SASP focuses on developing skills such as time management, organization, and academic discipline, and helps student-athletes maintain responsibility for their academic performance and meeting the NCAA Eligibility and Compliance Guidelines. The SASP accomplishes this by pairing student-athletes with mentors—also student-athletes—that have demonstrated the ability to effectively balance and accel in their academics and athletics.
The SASP uses a mentoring approach to assist student athletes within the program. Mentors are also student-athletes who have demonstrated the ability to successfully balance their athletics and academic responsibilities. The goal of the mentoring is to provide an accountability partner as well as a fellow student-athlete that understands the strains and responsibilities of being a student athlete.
There are multiple ways a student-athlete can be placed into the SASP:
By coaches: the primary placement method for student-athletes is by their coaches. At the beginning of each semester, coaches submit a list of student-athletes that they would like placed into the SASP. Each coach has their own list of criteria they use to determine who they want to place.
Self-placement: all student-athletes are welcome to place themselves into the SASP. A part of the on-going student-athlete population that utilizes the SASP have placed themselves because they want to have the extra accountability and structure that the SASP provides.
Recommendation: while those outside of the athletic coaching staff cannot directly place student-athletes into the SASP, they are welcome to recommend student-athletes check out the program.
Outreach: the professional staff overseeing the SASP has on-going collaboration with the Athletics department to reach out to student-athletes who may benefit from the SASP but are not currently placed in the program.
Each SASP session is comprised of multiple steps:
Goal setting: mentors help student-athletes articulate and set goals for the semester, whether those are daily, weekly, monthly, or by end-of-semester goals. Mentors follow-up on these goals each week to ensure that the student-athlete is making effective progress towards achieving those goals.
Grade checks: mentors do weekly grade checks with student-athletes to ensure that academic goals are being met. This includes checking grades on the course sites as well as having discussions with student-athletes about what’s going well with courses and what isn’t meeting the student-athlete’s academic expectations.
Schedule and time management: mentors work with student-athletes to look at upcoming travel for sports, assignments and deadlines, and other responsibilities and create a schedule that includes allotted time for homework, studying, and/or test prep.
Weekly communication with coaches: each week, coaches are provided updates on how student-athletes on their team that have been placed in the SASP are doing. These updates include grades, attendance for SASP sessions, and qualitative notes on how the student-athlete is doing.
Connecting with resources: mentors are trained to help student-athletes assess their needs and connect them with appropriate resources. This can include, but is not limited to, connecting student-athletes with academic support services, accessibility and accommodations, the Wellness center, and other appropriate services on campus.
For more information regarding SASP, please call the office of Academic Support at 660.562.1975 or email Kenzie Martin at kenziem@nwmissouri.edu
Peer Mentor
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