Season 6 Ep 3-Bridging Research & Practice: Advancing Equity in Student Athlete Success

Speaker A: Sam. Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to the RPP Exchange, brought to you by the Racial and Social Justice Collaborative at the center for Educational Innovation and Improvement at the University of Maryland, College Park. I'm your host, VIP Vuom Parham, and this is the space where we dive into conversations about how research practice partnerships are driving systematic changes in education and beyond. In today's episode, we're focusing on how research and practice come together to shape the academic and personal successes of student athletes, exploring how data can transform educational experiences in collegiate athletics. Joining me for this conversation is Brady Rue, Associate Athletic Director for Academic Services and Director of the Gossett Student Athlete center for Academic and Personal Excellence. Brady joined Maryland Athletics in 2019 and is now in his sixth school year, leading academic services for more than 550 student athletes across 20 athletic teams. In addition to overseeing the Gossett center, he sits on the Office of Undergraduate Studies Administrative Council. Brady earned both his Bachelor's of Science and his Master's of Education from Penn State University. He's an active member of the national association of Academic and Student Athlete Development Professionals and continues his commitment to community driven leadership research and lifelong learning. Brady, it's a pleasure to have you on the RPP Exchange. Welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me. Delighted to be here. Vaughn.

Speaker C: To start, can you share a bit about your current role at the Gossett

Speaker B: Student Athlete center and the mission that drives your work?

Speaker A: Absolutely. So, currently serve as Associate Athletic Director for Academic Services at the University of Maryland and Director of the Gossett Student Athlete center for Academic and Personal Excellence. Excellence. That means, I believe, that student athletes can be competitive in all aspects of their life, Vaughn. So most people see them on the athletic fields and courts, but in our work, we get to see them in the classrooms, in the community service spaces, in the student athlete development spaces, and we get to see, just see how competitive they are in life. Um, it's a very inspiring field to work in. I've been doing this 25 years now, and I love every minute of it.

Speaker C: How did, uh, your professional journey lead

Speaker B: you into higher education and specifically into

Speaker C: supporting student athletes in their holistic development?

Speaker A: Well, I come from a family of educators. My mom taught first grade for 30 years. I lived across from the elementary school in Aurora, central Pennsylvania. My dad's brother, my uncle, was my sixth grade teacher. He paddled me twice. My kids laugh about that now. They've never heard of a paddle in elementary school. My uncle on my mom's side was the superintendent of schools of our school district, so come from A family of educators was blessed to have phenomenal coaches in high school who taught me leadership and life skills, had an opportunity to captain the football and basketball teams. And I wanted to be in education. I wanted to be in sport from a young age, and I wanted to be a high school guidance counselor is really what I was. I set my mind toward. And, uh, maybe jumping ahead a little bit, I had an opportunity to go to graduate school when I finished undergraduate at Penn State, and I got a graduate assistantship working in football there in academic support. And that was really just. That's where I pushed off the wall. And it was. It's been. It's been a great journey from there. I, um, I did higher education administration and really studied academic support for student athletes. And. And again, it's been a. It's been a great journey over 25 years now.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for that. It really sounds like this is, uh,

Speaker C: a full circle moment for you. I know that you're currently pursuing your doctoral studies. Could you share what your research is centered on and what drew you to that specific area of inquiry?

Speaker A: Yes, you're correct. I'm enrolled currently at Frostburg State University in their online Doctorate in Educational, uh, Leadership program. And the pursuit of this advanced degree for me was an opportunity to delve deeper into. Into the research of a topic that I've been, quite frankly, frustrated about for quite some time. And that's been the lack of student athletes. And I will say Division 1 student athletes, because that's where most of my experience has been, who are enrolled in teacher certification programs as undergraduates. And I come at this from a few different lenses. But. But I'll. I'll speak to, uh, even right now. I have. I have three children. They're all boys, ages 11, 9, and 7. And I watch them come through the developmental process, and I have a chance to coach them in youth sports. And then I get to see how impressive the student athletes are here at the University of Maryland. And I would love to have them in the classrooms teaching my kids just the character attributes, the resilience, the persistence, the work ethic, the ability to be, uh, a part of a team. Those are the character attributes that I want my children to learn through these developmental phases of their life in public education. But of the student athletes currently enrolled here at the university, I can't think of any that are in teacher certification programs for undergraduates. And so I'm really interested in a few different angles here, Vaughn. First, being ways in which institutions across the country have maybe created Alternative pathways to teacher certification for student athletes. A lot of the challenge lies within practice times and the requirements. The state requirements as it relates to student teaching and the amount of hours required to be in the classroom just doesn't line up with the practice schedules of a lot of our elite level athletes here. And the other thing that I want to examine, Vaughn, I'm really interested in this because I see this every day at the office is the impact on Division one athletically related activity. The time demands on enrollment, persistence and completion of K12 teacher education programs and the time demands on the student athletes at the Division 1 level especially continue to increase. And I think that will likely limit the ability to persist in some of these teacher education requirements. So, uh, hopefully that is a decent explanation of what I'm interested, how I'm interested in this, Vaughn, and I'll share this, that in my 25 years working with student athletes, I've had one who was on my caseload that successfully completed a teacher certification program and that was a football student athlete at Penn State. And I see the model can work. And now I've been passionate about trying to make it work here at the University of Maryland and beyond.

Speaker C: While you were saying that, I was just reflecting on what that meant. And um, I would love the listeners to reflect as well. But it sounds like we're creating a space where the student athletes, like you said, at the highest level of uh, collegiate sports are being forced to choose between maybe the sport they're currently playing and their post collegiate endeavors. Uh, where some students may want to have futures in education but they would have to choose between maybe going to practice or going to weight room. Um, and it's causing that, that divide. And I can imagine 18, uh, year old student who's fighting for playing time might choose going to practice versus ah, like a Teacher for America program.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the competing priorities. And I worked with a colleague at a previous institution who, who we would look at the curriculum of some of the majors across the institution and then we would look at the practice schedules and the travel schedules and the time demands placed on the student athletes and we would say, man, how can we adjust curriculum? Because we don't want to kill the dream. Because these students have their whole lives crafted and become great in their sport and there's a lot of value that they learn in the locker rooms, in the fields and courts that are transitional life skills to the workplace. So we want them to continue to be competitive athletically. I believe as educators, researchers and practitioners we need to figure out ways to adjust the systems of higher education to allow these students to stay competitive in both. And so what are those barriers to certain educational programs that do not allow student athletes to enroll? And in one of my doctoral classes right now, actually have an assignment due in a couple weeks that looks at the pros and cons of online education. And a lot of my colleagues across the Big Ten conference, we spend time talking about institution to institution and online course offerings or independent study opportunities and capstone requirements. And man, Vaughn, we've even been talking about sport for credit. Should athletes and the things that they're, they're learning in the locker rooms be awarded academic credit for sport? So there's a lot of things and a lot of stuff that we could, we could go into here, but I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head there just looking at the competing priorities and, and how sometimes they can be barriers to the pursuit of educational certificates while still playing a sport that you love and you've grown up playing.

Speaker C: So here at the RPP exchange we really dive into research practice partnerships. We know that research practice partnerships are long term collaborative relationships between researchers like yourself and practitioners. And the goal of these partnerships is to directly inform practice based on the research. So both sides are learning from each other. M. It's very much a give and take model used to solve real educational problems. My question to you, Brady, is how could an RPP framework support your research on alternative teacher certification pathways for student athletes?

Speaker A: That's a great question and that's um, an important uh, thought that we could develop something here. So what comes to mind for me, Vaughn, is as a researcher of this topic, I really want to partner with high school athletic directors. I plan when I get to the dissertation phase to format a mixed methods study that would collect data from across the Big Ten, that's 18 Division 1 institutions. To look at the numbers, the data, the numbers of student athletes enrolled potentially in colleges of education across those conferences and try to understand just from a numbers perspective how many there are. And I would like to get out and from a, ah, from a qualitative research perspective and do interviewing mostly with high school athletic directors to understand how many former athletes, Division 1 student athletes are teachers and coaches in their schools. What I've learned from a few that I've talked with already is there's a disconnect between the educators and then the coaches who are not in the classroom but come in after. Maybe they work a 9 to 5 job outside of the school and then they come in to coach A team that there's a disconnect between the education and the athletic experience because the teachers don't know the coaches and the coaches don't know the teachers. And when I grew up, Vaughn, my high school basketball coach was. What was the special education teacher in the school? Um, my high school baseball coach was the physical, uh, education teacher in the school. And if I was messing up in the classroom, that that teacher, my coach knew about it and I, and I could do extra study hall or my locker would be cleaned out and I wouldn't practice that day. I think we're missing something there. When we have a lack of the student athletes pursuing education teacher certification, they're not in the schools and there's a disconnect between the coaches and the teachers. So researcher, practitioner, and also we could look at it the other way. We could. We could have partnerships with high schools where these athletic directors could come in and shadow me and get to know the student athletes, get to know the coaches here at the university, and then inform the athletes that education is an option, that we could create some partnerships where they could maybe shadow outside of the required pre student teaching or student teaching, um, aspects of the certification trajectory. So I think there's, I think the sky's the limit for these, for these partnerships. And uh, it's just a matter of, of designing them in ways that will work with everybody. But I'm excited about the research practice partnership that we could do here in the context of these teacher certification opportunities.

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker C: Have there been any examples currently where research directly informed practice or intervention, uh, here at the Gossett Center. Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, something that's, I've seen that's been exciting. I'll give you two things quickly here. We have an academic committee of an athletics council. The athletics council is made up of faculty and staff from across the campus, educators within different colleges who look at student success initiatives. They govern some of the work of the Gossett Student Athlete Center. And what it's really grown into was that these faculty and staff can create opportunities for athletes to engage in research opportunities. So we, you know, data is, is huge in athletics. Whether you're, whether you're looking at baseball and you're looking at on base percentage and you're looking at batting averages, et cetera, or now, now all of the athletes are, are wearing what we call these wearables that are collecting data when they work out on heart rate, things of that nature. So we have a, uh, faculty member within the athletics counselor counsel, Dr. Tammy Clegg, who works with technology. And she has designed research opportunities for athletes to look at the data that they produce by themselves in these workout opportunities and try to draw some conclusions around performance. And I think that it's just, she's just scratched the surface of student athletes being able to see their performance as a research activity, to see, to see that the work they're doing on the field, how the study of sport can, you know, really, really, really is a research opportunity. Um, and, and now they're becoming more interested in data collection and, and qualitative and quantitative research design because they're using their own data that they're producing on these fields and courts, um, which I think is very innovative. And it's also helping the student athletes become more interested in critical thinking and the things that are involved with being a part of a higher education enterprise. Uh, um, another thing, Vaughn, that I've seen in my career that I think relates very well to this research practice partnership is statisticians and those that work in statistics environments helping our coaches understand the data. And I referenced previously, you know, baseball is big on that. And I think that the athletes, the student athletes become more interested in the work that they're doing because they can see how the data can inform decisions down the road. And so, and I, I know base one's a big one. We had a faculty athletic rep who I, uh, worked with at a previous institution who was a statistician who would come in and work with the team to show them the research of the practitioners that were out there on that, on that baseball field. And he would help them determine what it all meant, you know, what the data meant and how they could make decisions that would help improve that data. So, um, you know, this is something that I'm excited about this, the longevity of these RPPs that we can do something that's sustaining. We can endure these collaborations between athletics and the campus community at large. And, and again, I think the sky's the limit.

Speaker C: It came to mind when you talked about, you know, enduring, uh, what it takes to really make RPP successful and working through that learning process.

Speaker B: Uh, what challenges have you encountered or do you foresee in building or sustaining

Speaker C: meaningful research practice collaborations?

Speaker A: I think it's the, the. Just the stick to itness. I mean, of, of seeing a project through and, and not on to the next thing you know, we, we live in a, we live in an Instagram world where it's. Where it's quick, quick bites and it's on to the next thing you know, it's. It's and these, these partnerships in order to sustain them. I mean they, we, we gotta build capacity. We have to um, overcome the desire for a quick fix and we got to be able to set longitudinal and long term goals that we can see over the years. And I think in my passionate pursuit of student athletes enrolled in alternative programs for teacher certification, I got the long horizon view. You know, this is going to be an RPP that's going to have to last five years, five to 10 years. We're going to have to hit incoming student athletes into these big ten institutions with some educational programming that says yes, this is possible. And the biggest recruiter into these programs are their teammates. Von they, you know, they, a lot of times they're going to major in their teammate that they're sitting next to in the locker room who's having a good experience in the class. They're going to be talking to that young man or young woman and they're going to want to pursue what they're pursuing because they've shared that they've had a good experience. We need to change the narrative as it relates to education being an option or not being an option for the athletic population. So that's the challenge I think being able to um, sustain, make sure that these programs are mutually beneficial both to the student athlete and the coop campus community in These K through 12 public higher education institutions. Um, I think that's what I foresee. We can, we can, we can um, we can make this happen. You know, we can improve the teacher shortage, we can improve teacher retention. I think that I'm excited about what's to come.

Speaker B: What I would like to do is take a break. Brady is bringing such great perspective and I hope the listeners will tune back in for part two of this episode.

Speaker A: Sam?

Speaker C: Mhm.