New Perspectives at Invite a Professor to Practice Day
November 6, 2014 | Football, Featured Writers, Turner Walston
By Turner Walston
“It feels a little bit like organized chaos,” said Chip Snively,” a professor at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School attending football practice Wednesday. “Everybody seems to know where they need to be and what they need to do.”
Snively and more than 30 faculty members were in attendance as part of 'Invite a Professor to Practice Day.' The professors got a 'chalk talk' prior to practice, watched Wednesday's on-field activities from the sidelines, had a round table discussion about the intersection of athletics and academics and then shared a meal with the student-athletes.
“I think it's very important, on both sides of it,” Tar Heel head coach Larry Fedora said. “The professors get an opportunity to see what these guys do away from the classroom. This is our classroom, and we're out here teaching these players just like they're teaching them in the classroom. We just happen to be doing it on the field. I think it gives them a perspective of how much time and effort these kid put into what they do away from the classroom, and on the other side of it, it gives the players an opportunity to sit down and eat with them and to open up and really talk to their professor, and realize that the professor is a normal person. The professor gets to realize, 'Hey, this is a great kid,' and so I just think it's a good way of building relationships all the way around.”
Allen Champagne invited two of his Morehead-Cain Foundation advisors, Julie DeVoe and Karman Kent. “They pay for my school, and they're the reason I'm here, so I want to show them what I do best,” he said.
“He's accomplished a lot, and he's really taken seriously the student-athlete part of that, where academics come first,” Kent said of Champagne. “We're really proud of him for what he does both on and off the field.”
“We get to see him on the other side, a little buttoned-up sometimes, so it's really exciting to see this side of Allen as well,” added DeVoe.
Public Policy instructor Aimee McHale smiled when Junior Gnonkonde, the student-athlete who invited her, gave her a wave at practice. “I think he's glad I'm here,” she said. Gnonkonde is a regular visitor at McHale's office hours, making sure to catch up on discussions and assignments missed due to football travel.
“She knows football is not an easy thing to do and most of the time I miss class because of an away game, so I make sure I go to her office hours and get the extra help I need to pass the class or make a good grade,” Gnonkonde said.
Snively chatted with one of his students, tight end Eric Albright, as the team practiced field goal formations. “This is Division I, top-flight athletics and so I'm amazed that they're able to carry themselves, their mindset to focus on this. and they'll walk away and have to go pick up the book and do what their responsibilities are for class th next day or the test they're preparing for,” Snively said. “I'm highly impressed and I always am and I've alway told the students that I think that. I'm amazed at what they do day in and day out in handling the variety of responsibilities that they have.”
Champagne said Invite a Professor to Practice Day was important not just to the professors but to the student-athletes as well. It provides both student-athletes and instructors with different perspectives on one another, and could bolster the foundation to improve performance on the field and in the classroom. “When we can show them how hard we work on the field, it shows them a different perspective and another personality of that same player, and it might change the mind of a professor. So, the next time they see them in class, they can be like, 'I saw how hard they work on the field, so I know his potential. All I have to do as a professor is to expand that potential and find whatever can trigger him to make him achieve whatever he can.'”
Fedora himself enjoys the opportunity to chat with the instructors that see his players in a different setting day to day. “It's interesting to hear what they have to say about our guys, and how they act in the classroom. Some of the guys that I think are very quiet, don't talk a lot, I find out that they communicate and do a great job in class, so that always makes you proud.”
Invite a Professor to Practice Day is just one of the many efforts Carolina is undertaking to strengthen the bond between academics and athletics, and the day goes a long way in helping faculty and student-athletes understand one another.
“I think that all of us have a real investment in finding a way to integrate better,” McHale. “D-1 athletics are not going away, and so we have to make it the best we can and keep the students at the focus of that. When I see the kids out here busting their butts and loving what they do, that's great.”
