Colorado University Athletics
Jupille Embraces Role As CU Faculty Athletics Rep
January 16, 2018 | General, Neill Woelk
BOULDER — Early in his teaching career at Colorado, political science professor Joe Jupille had a CU student-athlete in one of his classes.
Jupille remembers her providing him with the requisite "travel letter," a notification all student-athletes provide to their professors, notifying him that she would be out of town (and thus miss a few classes) because of competitions.
But, Jupille said, that student-athlete also made a concerted effort to keep up on her schoolwork and meet with him on a regular basis.
"She would come in during office hours and we would talk about class and political science in the world, and then we would talk about her life as a student athlete — and it just knocked me out," Jupille said. "The contrast with who I was at 19 (years old) and what I was doing at 19 and what this person was doing at 19 was astounding. I couldn't believe how organized and disciplined and hard working and bright and talented this person was."
While Jupille didn't know it at the time, that semester-long encounter would set the wheels in motion for him to become much more involved CU Athletics — and he is now in the midst of his first year as CU's Faculty Athletic Representative.
The NCAA requires every athletic department to have a FAR. At Colorado, the position is appointed by the chancellor.
The official job description lists seven duties, the primary of which is "to certify that all student-athletes meet all NCAA, Pac-12 Conference, and University requirements for initial and continuing eligibility for athletic participation, both practice and intercollegiate competition, and financial aid."
Other duties include monitoring and evaluating academic progress of student-athletes; working directly with the athletic department's compliance office to ensure adherence to NCAA, Pac-12 and CU regulations; representing CU to the NCAA and Pac-12; serving as a liaison between CU Athletics and the Boulder campus faculty; and interacting directly with CU student-athletes.
Jupille's predecessor, Dr. David Clough, broke those duties down into three simple areas, which Jupille has embraced: academic success and integrity, institutional control, and student-athlete well-being.
Now, after basically six months on the job, Jupille is simply trying to get comfortable with all the nuances of the position. That includes getting to know the student-athletes and administration, as well as making sure CU faculty members are up-to-date on what is happening within the athletic department.
"To be honest, I'm still wrapping my arms around the job," Jupille said. "I've been very student-focused, which is obviously the right priority. But as I grow into the job, I want to do more to bring faculty into contact and more interaction with athletics and vice versa."
Part of Jupille's duties in the fall involved traveling with CU's teams to see what kind of issues student-athletes face on road trips.
"That's been maybe the biggest eye-opener — how dedicated the students are to what they are doing," Jupille said. "To watch them travel, get off the plane, check into the hotel, hit the books, go to a team meal and a team meeting, squeeze in an hour of studying, go to bed, get up, compete — and then hop back on a plane and leave has been a revelation. These are hard-core business trips they are on. It's amazing to see how hard they work and how accomplished they are. The travel is exhausting and they are juggling a lot of things with a tremendous amount of skill, class and enthusiasm."
A "casual" sports fan growing up, Jupille said his short time on the job has already helped him realize how far off the stereotypes of college athletes actually are.
"What I would love to see somehow would be for every faculty member to shadow me for some of the things I get to do," Jupille said. "It would abolish the stereotypes. These are our most accomplished students who work really hard at school and work very hard and at a very high level with their respective sports. They are also students who do all these other things — service work, work in the community, volunteer work, those types of things. It's a really special group of students."
Jupille also believes athletics are an integral part of a university, a piece of the bigger puzzle that makes a university a valuable asset to a community and state.
"We're more than just books and classrooms," he said. "I think about athletics in the same way that I think about art, music, robotics competitions — all of the extracurriculars that we value and love that make universities great places to be, enriching places to be. To me, the university is a place to engage the human condition, and athletics is part of that."
Along with helping ensure student-athlete well-being, Jupille must also do his best to serve as a connection between campus faculty and athletics — a gap that is not always easily bridged.
"I'm doing my best to be there as a sounding board for faculty and a resource for faculty," Jupille said. "I have more work to do in that area, but it's something I think we can improve on both ends."
Jupille recently spoke to the Boulder Faculty Assembly, and next semester hopes to work together with the Faculty Leadership Institute to set up conversations between CU Athletic Director Rick George and faculty members. Jupille is also working with the BFA on a pilot program that will have sophomore student-athletes identify a faculty member who had an impact on them in their freshman year, and the BFA will then recognize those faculty members.
"You do it one person at a time," Jupille said. "This community is so full of interested and talented people — faculty, staff, students-athletes and non-athletes — the more we interact with each other, the better off we will be."
Jupille has plenty of objectives he would like to accomplish during his tenure. He is concerned about student-athletes' time demands — something the Pac-12 recently addressed with new guidelines — and he wants to make sure student-athletes have the opportunity to be "normal" students whenever possible.
At the same time, he also wants to make sure he is addressing faculty concerns.
All those items, he admits, will take time.
"You can't do this job well and be looking around for another job at another institution," Jupille said. "To accept the FAR position is to say, 'OK, I'm going to commit myself to being at the University of Colorado and investing in the University of Colorado.' … I want to make this place amazing because I want to be here. It's a selfish aspect of wanting the University of Colorado to thrive, to have it all — to have our mountain views, our Nobel Prize winners and our national championships. That's a cause worth devoting yourself to and trying to contribute to as best you can."
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
