U-T Tyler Athletes Excellent Students

TYLER — UT-Tyler President Dr. Rodney Mabry is expressing his pride in the academic performance of his school’s student-athletes. Howard Patterson is UTT’s vice president for auxiliary operations and intercollegiate athletics. In a letter to Patterson that was made available to KTBB, Mabry writes, “Thank you for providing me with your latest data on grades of our athletes (Spring 2011) overall and by sport. What a wonderful report it is! It shows an overall athletics GPA average of 3.00 . . . that’s just great, a full “B” average. For over 200 students? Hard to believe! Once again, your students easily exceeded the average for our student body as a whole. And, while there is room for improvement in individual sports, each one was far above satisfactory.

“Special thanks go to Head Coach Stephanie Webb and her women soccer players, though. They led all sports with a 3.51 average GPA. Wow! A whole soccer team??!!

“Please tell your coaches how much I appreciate them working hard to recruit quality students and quality athletes who are most of all, quality people. I truly believe that our athletes are the backbone of UT Tyler’s student body and that is a rare thing for a university.

“Howard, I cannot thank you enough for hiring such excellent coaches and I cannot thank /them /enough for taking their role as an important part of our academic mission so seriously.”