Maybe it’s that new Watkins Student-Athlete Academic Excellence Center paying off. Over the summer, UNH claimed a shared first-place-finish for the America East Academic Cup, a measure of student-athletes’ academic success among colleges that compete in the America East Athletics Conference. For the 2014–15 academic year, the university’s Division I athletes compiled a collective 3.23 grade-point average, the Wildcats’ highest GPA in the 20-year history of the award, bettering a 3.2 benchmark set the prior year. This year’s award, shared with the University of Hartford, is the university’s third, joining back-to-back titles in 1998–99 and 1999–2000.
The university also performed well on a key measure of athletic performance, the Learfield Sports Directors Cup. Billed as the crowning achievement in college athletics, the Learfield Cup quantifies academic institutions’ success across their entire athletic program — a total of up to 20 men’s and women’s teams per institution in Division I, the category in which UNH competes. For the academic year, UNH placed 78th out of 289 teams nationwide and first among America East teams. The university also ranked first among all schools competing in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision.
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Originally published in UNH Magazine—Fall 2015 Issue
