With thousands to choose from, selecting courses can be a daunting task, especially in a student’s first year at Brown. As part of the University’s efforts to address this challenge, all incoming recruited athletes now receive a letter from a peer adviser on their team as part of the One for Me program, which has expanded from its initial four-team pilot to encompass all teams.
First-year varsity athletes, in particular, can be susceptible to simply picking courses in which their teammates are enrolled, shying away from shopping a wide range of classes, said several administrators, coaches and players.
“I am, in fact, concerned about freshman athletes arriving on campus, feeling overwhelmed ... just looking to their teammates and asking, ‘what classes are you taking?’ and just following their teammates to classes,” said Lars Tiffany ’90, head coach of the men’s lacrosse team and a member of the Campus Life Advisory Board’s subcommittee on athletics and physical education.
The One for Me program is designed to counter this trend by making incoming recruited athletes conscious of the depth and breadth of courses offered at the University, said Associate Director of Athletics Sarah Fraser.
Fraser, along with other subcommittee members, launched a One for Me pilot program in fall 2010 with four participating teams: men’s lacrosse, women’s soccer and the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams. In 2012, after two successful pilot years, all of Brown’s athletic squads were invited to join the program, Fraser said.
Over the summer before their first year on College Hill, incoming recruited athletes receive letters from both their coach and a peer adviser — a member of the team who has been selected to usher the first-year into campus life.
“These letters serve to let the first-year know what the program is and why it’s important,” Fraser said, praising the role of peer advisers. “They talk about their Brown experience and lessons they’ve learned, not only about course selection, but really just sharing their experiences with the incoming first-years.”
The letters serve as resources particularly for the fall athletes, who arrive on campus early to begin training for their season, said Carolan Norris, associate director of athletics and former head coach of the field hockey and women’s lacrosse teams.
“It provides them with a comfort zone, someone they know they can talk to on their first day at Brown,” Norris said. “It lets them know there are more options academically than what everybody on their team is taking.”
All students often take advice from friends and peers. But because student-athletes spend many hours with their teammates every day, a recruit’s team often becomes his or her primary friend group. Without other resources, first-year athletes can be inadvertently influenced to take a class simply because a teammate has taken or is taking it, Fraser said.
“You’re just trying to get the experiences of the other athletes, so you end up doing a lot of the same things they do,” said track and field sprinter Ajani Brown ’14, who served as a peer adviser for sprinters in the class of 2016.
Following in the footsteps of teammates “really limits athletes academically and socially,” Brown said. “Socially, if recruits keep taking classes with just their teammates, they won’t branch out and find people that they could be great friends with.”
One for Me encourages students to step outside their comfort zone and take a class without a teammate.
“We want them to take a look at the curriculum, see what’s out there and make some good choices for themselves,” Norris said. “We just want these student-athletes to open themselves up to something new.”
Tiffany said non-athletes tend to be more knowledgeable about the open curriculum, which is often a primary reason for their interest in the University, than athletes, who are frequently focused on the athletic program. For instance, the recruitment process familiarizes prospective student-athletes more with their teams’ reputation and culture than the University’s academic philosophy, he added.
“Often times, this means recruited athletes may not have a great comprehension of why Brown is different from the other Ivies,” Tiffany said. “The One For Me program can really bring them along and open their eyes to the opportunities and the advantages of the open curriculum.”
But taking a course with a teammate has benefits as well as costs, Brown said. Student-athletes keep each other accountable, making sure their teammates are staying on top of the workload and attending class regularly.
“When you miss a practice, a teammate will ask you why you weren’t there. The same thing applies to class. It increases accountability,” he said.
Having a teammate for a classmate can also encourage athletes to seek help if they need it, Brown added. “When you’re studying, if you’re having difficulty with a topic, you don’t have to text a random tutor or go to a TA you might not know.”
The initiative does not force student-athletes to take any class they do not wish to take. “If first-year students decide not to participate or not to take advantage of the advice that is being given as part of the program, then that is their prerogative,” Fraser wrote in an email to The Herald.
While the letters serve as the initial contact between peer advisers and incoming first-years, some teams go beyond the letters in acclimating new student-athletes to Brown.
“I have a lot of people, even this year when I wasn’t a peer adviser, come to me saying ‘I’m interested in political science, what classes would you recommend?’” Brown said.
Tiffany cited recruits’ praise for the program during dinners with other teams involved with One for Me as evidence of its positive impact.
“To hear the students talk about the class they chose to take that they normally wouldn’t have, the class that pushed them outside of their comfort zone a little bit, it was incredible,” Tiffany said. “As a coach, I just felt great that some of my older guys were able to influence my younger recruits in such a positive way.”
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