GSW Leads PBC in 2023-24, Earns Fourth Presidents’ Academic Award

Published 5:03 pm Wednesday, May 29, 2024

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Article provided by the Peach Belt Conference

 

HILTON HEAD, SC – Georgia Southwestern State University won its second consecutive Peach Belt Conference Presidents’ Academic Award on Tuesday night at the league’s annual awards dinner in Hilton Head. This is the fourth overall award for GSW, moving them into a tie with former PBC member Armstrong State University for the most in league history. GSW won their first in 2007-08 with the second in 2017-18 and the third last year. The award is presented by Barnes & Noble College.

The award recognizes excellence in academics concerning all of an institution’s student-athletes.

At the end of the academic school year the Peach Belt Conference asked each of the league’s 11 members to submit an average GPA for the undergraduate student body and a GPA for all student-athletes. These two numbers were used to determine each institutions’ GPA ratio that identifies which school’s athletes are performing most ahead of the curve in comparison to the student body. The schools are not measured against one another, just their athletes to their students.

Georgia Southwestern student-athletes carried an average GPA of 3.08 for the academic year while the undergraduate student-body had a 2.71. That ratio of 1.1365 was the highest among all conference members for the year. Overall, nine of the 10 PBC member institutions had student-athlete GPAs that were higher than their undergraduate student body.

The Presidents’ Academic Award is part of a larger conference program to highlight the accomplishments of PBC student-athletes in the classroom as well as on the field.

Barnes & Noble College currently operates more than 1,400 campus bookstores and their school-branded e-commerce sites, serving more than 6 million college students and faculty nationwide. As a strategic partner, Barnes & Noble College is a retail and learning company. The company is headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J.