BALTIMORE -- Liaisons from the National Collegiate Athletic Association spent two days on the Coppin State campus meeting with the athletic department as part of the limited-resource institutions grant program.

Wendy Walters, Christina Wright, Payton Williams and Chris Ruckdaschel are the liaisons from the NCAA who have been assigned to work with Coppin State and the implementation of the grant funds received by the University.

"This grant program is a partnership and collaboration between the institution and the NCAA to move forward several initiatives that will help benefit the academic success of their student-athletes," said Walters. "On this visit we took time to walk through the initiatives to make sure that everyone is on the same page, and reviewed the tasks as well as talking about expectations and goals."

The NCAA representatives met with the Coppin State athletic administration, the oversight committee, student-athletes, the faculty athletic representative and members of the CSU faculty.

The athletic department administration went through each of Coppin State's eight initiatives and answered questions from the liaisons in regards to those initiatives.

"The NCAA has assigned three individuals to each of the institutions that are participating in the grant program," Walters said. "The staff liaisons are there to be a resource as they move forward in the process of implementing their initiatives, as well as a resource for issues that may be beyond the initiatives."

The department of athletics outlined eight initiatives in securing the grant which included increasing academic staff for the athletic academic services program, increasing summer school and winter sessions opportunities for student-athletes, creating a faculty enrichment and peer mentoring program, creating a mobile athletic computer lab, providing resources to support academic readiness for student-athletes, developing broad-based Academic Progress Rate best practices procedures, increasing the number of real-time graduates by establishing a fifth-year degree completion program and developing a campus wide APR team.

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