Rockhurst Receives NCAA Presidents’ Award for Academic Excellence for 11th Consecutive Year

Rockhurst University has received the NCAA Presidents’ Award for Academic Excellence for achieving four-year Academic Success Rates of 90 percent or higher among its student-athletes for the 11th consecutive year.

Forty-three Division II member schools are recipients of the Presidents’ Award for Academic Excellence. Rockhurst is one of 10 schools to have earned the recognition every year since the award was started in 2011.

Rockhurst finished with a 95% ASR in 2020-21, which ranks in a tie for ninth among NCAA Division II institutions. Rockhurst led the Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC) and all Division II schools in Missouri and Kansas.

Bentley University and Saint Michael’s College were the top performers in Division II, earning an ASR of 99 percent. The Northeast-10 Conference led Division II with eight schools earning the award, followed by the GLVC with five schools.

“It is an honor recognizing 43 schools for this prestigious award,” said Steven Shirley, president of Minot State and chair of the Division II Presidents Council. “I applaud these schools and student-athletes for their hard work, commitment and dedication to achieving academic excellence.”

The Division II ASR includes transfers into a school in the calculation and removes transfers out who left school while academically eligible. The ASR also includes the more than 31,000 non-scholarship student-athletes who were enrolled in the four years covered in the most recent data.

Even when using the less-inclusive federal graduation rates, student-athletes are outperforming their peers in the general student population by 8% percent. For Division II athletes, the federal rate increased one percentage point to 60%, and the general student body increased one point to 52%.