Athletic Department Responses to Big Questions

If Providence College were to be best known for one thing only within the next 10-20 years, what should it be?

  • Renowned Academics.
  • Small school with big time academics and athletics.
  • Academic and athletic excellence.
  • National prominence in Academics & Athletics.
  • Producing people that are impacting the world in a positive way, making positive difference or/and serving or impacting other in a positive way.
  • Premier and Innovative Leader of Private Institutions in the Country (whether it be in academics, campus design, athletics etc.).
  • Being one of the top academic/athletic institutions in the country Become the nation’s premier Catholic liberal arts college.
  • How good their athletic facilities are and academics are.
  • Never being satisfied knowing there is always room to improve.
  • The perfect balance of great academics & high level athletics on a close-knit campus.
  • To stay constant in this world of flux; same values and beliefs in which the college was founded.
  • Fully meet the financial needs of students.
  • Being the best Liberal Arts school in the country!
  • One of the premiere Liberal Arts Institutions in the country.
  • Great Academic reputation, high job placement and championship athletic programs.
  • PC should be best known for the its continued success in both academics and athletics. It should be known for its proactive approach to changes in both of these areas, and it should be the model for schools looking to develop sustainable programs.

What should the College be doing in the next 10-20 years that it isn’t doing today?

  • Integrate more majors.
  • Provide housing for athletes on the level of our Big East competitors.
  • Re-evaluate each professor and coach to make sure that they not only are knowledgeable about their area of expertise but are excellent at teaching.  Hire professionals that can break down the material and inspire our students and athletes.  From the academic side, we hire knowledgeable people, but in general, they are not good at actually teaching the subject matter to people with little to no background in it.  From the athletics side, hire coaches that athletes admire, respect, and trust.  Great coaches can develop players and teach them parts of the game they haven’t learned before.  An athlete should never feel like they are plateauing and should always have more room to grow especially at a DI level.
  • Continue to develop the model program & be the leaders of industry in sport science & student-athlete wellness.
  • Maximizing support in athletics staffing.
  • Add sport management undergraduate and graduate degrees.
  • Add doctorate programs for a few areas.
  • Add Tech & social media majors (internships with athletics).
  • Support online degrees programs & include as an employee benefit-  Non-Providence included.  Increase & expand education opportunities for staff.
  • Create/ merge ideas of different departments, including athletics, through internships with each other/working groups/panels.  (Business, English, sciences, psych, education etc…).  Much to learn from each other.
  • Meet 100% of financial need for the students and families that want their child to attend Providence College but financially just miss being able to afford it or make ends meet.
  • The College needs to expand its array of academic offerings to students to match the ever-changing landscape of the workforce. This will better prepare students for life after PC as right now the academic offerings are slim and do not necessarily match the needs or wants of all students who currently study at the College.
  • Endowing athletic scholarships.
  • Fund and staff all sports at the NCAA maximum level.  Aspire to compete at the highest level in all sports to raise our national profile and thus enhance the quality of the total applicant pool.  Fund all need based financial aid to 100% of need.
  • Too top heavy at most dept. Took many asst. coaches for men’s basketball.
  • Not sure.
  • Improving on campus housing/dorms & food services(Ray) for students & student-athletes.
  • Continue to segment the diversity of the human body-more scholarship money.
  • Add Masters degree in Sports Management/Leadership.
  • Increasing majors in the business school, especially including Athletics/Sports.  i.e. – Sports Management Major.
  • To be more racially and socioeconomically balanced.
  • Build new housing for students.
  • It should look into developing and introducing another major, such as Communications, that will attract prospective students. Along with the continued success of the business school, the creation of another major should become a priority.
  • The college should also be pursuing the development of the area around campus. While we have made considerable progress on the current campus grounds, we need to find ways to improve the surrounding neighborhoods.

If Providence College had $100M+ new dollars to spend, how should it be spent?

  • Update oldest buildings (Aquinas, Fennell, etc.).
  • Buy the houses on road across from Soccer field on Huxley and make a strip of “town,” that would include business like a pub, coffee shop, and retail stores. Above these should be healthy housing/non alcohol housing options that are upgrades from others available. this would help curb alcohol problem as well as add more attractive options for athletes. The town would be a place to hang out and shop that would give PC a “town” feel – something we are seriously lacking near our campus.
  • Hire those new professors and coaches that we might not have necessarily spent the money on before. Let go of professors and coaches that are not performing (or winning) to expectations and hire new employees that might have previously been out of our grasp.
  • Increase Staffing & functional amenity needs for sports.
    • *Direct impact on Student-Athletes- Coaches/Operations, Medical trainers, Sport psych, Exercise Physiologist or Clinic Director.
  • Indoor multi-sport use turf facility.
  • Increase size, scope of Counseling Center-  team approach-  more access to match needs of Providence students.
  • New dorm for all students-  wellness center.
  • Athlete Dorm & performance center.
  • Friars Way (shops: student needs, barber shop, fan shop, restaurants, cafe, frozen yogurt-  around PC somewhere)-  Huxley.
  • Innovation area for the science & tech field.
  • Internship pods/ building for companies to interview or have internships happening on campus.
  • Financial Aid Meeting 100% of need, buy the houses and real estate around the campus to expand campus and bring appropriate commercial businesses to surrounding areas to enhance on campus life, i.e. convenience stores, retail stores, restaurants etc.
  • If Providence College had $100M+ dollars to spend, they should spend it revitalizing the area around Providence College. For example, the College would greatly benefit from the addition of a street near campus that has shops, restaurants, bars, a small grocery store, entertainment options, and housing that is readily accessible to students. A great area to add this street would be near the Huxley entrance as this would create that welcoming and college town atmosphere that the college is missing at this point in time and needs to compete with other universities that already have this.
  • Build an on campus basketball arena. This would get us away from having to deal with the terrible lease at the Dunk and give us a multi-purpose facility in which the college could host men’s and women’s basketball games, graduations, commencements, concerts, etc. This would help ensure the long-term viability of our athletics department and be a major focal point for student activity on our campus.
  • Fund and staff all sports at the NCAA maximum level to increase visibility and raise our national profile.  Fund all need based financial aid to 100% of need.  Continue to invest in campus buildings, classrooms, dorms, etc. to offer the highest quality educational and living experience for all students.
  • Put dressing rooms for visiting teams at the soccer & lacrosse stadium. Put bathrooms in the stadium also. Put more dressing rooms in Schneider Arena. Also, an Officials room, for hockey, soccer, lacrosse officials.
  • Parking and updated housing.
  • Indoor turf facility for athletic teams & student-athlete apartments on campus.
  • Add sports science ie. physiology department; continue to build infrastructure and dorms.
  • Build an on-campus basketball arena.
  • Renovate and build brand new dorms campus wide. The dormitories on campus are mostly old, antiquated and over crowded.
  • More financial aid packages to students of all backgrounds.
  • Increase endowment.
  • More Athletic scholarships to allow our “”lower end”” sports to be more competitive.”
  • Scholarship Endowment.
  • Part of the $100M+ should be used to help grow the endowment. The other part should be used to invest in the development of the area surrounding campus. Specifically, the creation of an area adjacent to campus that offers a variety of restaurants, shops, etc.

What should be the most important measure or indicator of the College’s success?  Why?

  • Student’s placement post college and beyond, because this shows the value of the education.
  • Alumni satisfaction and giving back. If graduates like their experience and it was a quality experience, it will propel them into the world where they can express their gratitude by giving back to their school monetarily or in other service ways.
  • Survey the students that just graduated and ask them for their opinions on their experience.  Then, survey those students again a year or two post graduation and see if anything changes.
  • Alumni satisfaction, giving & post-grad profiles & accomplishments. How do you measure if someone is being transformed at Providence? (I believe it happens). Percentage of grads with a job or in post-graduate work. By year?
  • The type of graduate we produce determined by what they do after they graduate and the way in which they do it.
  • A measure of the the College’s success should be the rates of recent graduates placement into the workforce or graduate school within months of graduation. This is important as the whole point of a college education is to prepare a student for life in the workforce or in graduate school. Therefore, it is crucial to measure the College’s success by how well they prepared their students and to do so, the College needs to look at the rates of recent graduates placement in the workforce and graduate school.
  • Graduation rate and ability of graduates to find jobs.
  • Stats such as our graduation rate, GPA’s, grad school acceptances, or career placement statistics with top business who are recruiting our students are very important and useful.  How successful are our alumni are in their field and how much did they value their experience here at PC is a bit more subjective but may be a better indicator of our overall success.   Recognizing that a segment of every class will graduate and just move on, the loyalty of those who stay engaged with the college and communicate as alumni can be measured by the amount of time, resources and/or support they give back to the college to enhance the experience of current students.
  • Great Professors and staff.
  • Student graduation rate.
  • Continued application growth not only in total applicants but overall quality of applicants each year. This will show that students are motivated to be a part of what we have here and what we are building if we continue to have the perfect balance of great academics & high level athletics.
  • The reverence of which alumni speak of the impact PC has had on their lives.
  • Graduate 100% of students with less financial burden.
  • Percentage of students who get jobs after graduation (or Graduate School) as well as starting salaries for jobs. It is important due to the investment that it takes to come here – parents need to feel that there will be a substantial return.
  • Graduation Rate/Job Placement: Indicated academic success of the college and how well the college’s career center advocates for our graduates in the work force.
  • Job placement for students. As parents and students make a significant financial decision to attend PC, we must have as strong career services program.
  • The most important measures or indicators of the College’s success should relate to the applicant pool each year. Looking at the numbers and types of students who are applying to PC, we should be able to measure the success of the college. Among other things, those numbers will be directly affected by the success of athletics on the national stage. We need to recognize and appreciate that the continued support and development of our athletic programs is crucial to the overall success of the College.