Missed Classes, a Changed Grade, and One Disillusioned Adviser

David Zentz for The Chronicle

Will Collier was in a bind. A few days before Christmas last year, the academic coordinator for men’s basketball at the University of California at Los Angeles learned that a highly touted player might have to sit out the rest of the season because of an inadequate grade.

The Bruins had already lost three star players last year to the National Basketball Association. The latest news would only complicate the challenges for head coach Steve Alford, who was entering his second season.

Mr. Collier, 33, who had just completed his first year on the job, contacted Duane Broussard, an assistant coach and the team’s academic liaison. The player, Mr. Collier explained, had received a C-minus in a communications class but needed a B to participate in team activities. The assistant coach, according to Mr. Collier, proposed a plan: Approach the professor about changing the player’s grade.

That wasn’t the reaction Mr. Collier had expected, not at UCLA, whose storied tradition and reputation for high academic standards he had long revered. When he took the job here, he was aware that the university, like many others, admitted players with academic deficiencies. But he believed that, with the right motivation and support, he could help them succeed.

A former scholarship athlete who had struggled in school himself, Mr. Collier could relate to students who had trouble reading and writing. He cleared a spot in his office for players to study, and he hired a high-school teacher to help them improve their reading and comprehension skills. He understood that basketball was the main draw for many players, but he encouraged them to think about their career ambitions beyond the sport.

The coach’s request brought him up short. “I didn’t want to be associated with it,” he says. “It’s not what I got into this for.”

Academic advisers like Mr. Collier are an essential part of the athletic enterprise, but they have largely thankless jobs. The pay is low, the hours are long, and the stress of keeping players eligible has led to rapid turnover in the profession. If teams don’t meet the academic requirements of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or if programs break rules to keep players eligible, academic advisers are often the first to go.

Many forces work against them. The careers of most coaches hang on wins and losses, not graduation rates. Faculty members are evaluated on teaching and research, not helping the athletic department. And many players view anything that doesn’t involve a bouncing ball as an obstacle on their path to NBA riches.

UCLA expects more of its students. The university’s academic-support staff emphasizes the need for all players to be self-sufficient learners, but during his time there, Mr. Collier says, the message did not always get through. As a key go-between, he sought to confront academic problems directly. He met with the dean of students’ office to answer questions about players’ academic troubles. He produced regular reports for coaches about disciplinary issues, including notices that players had skipped classes and academic-support sessions and had made disparaging comments about the faculty. But Mr. Collier says he had trouble getting the coaches’ attention.

That is not how the university sees it. Christina A. Rivera, who oversees the 16-person academic-support unit and who was Mr. Collier’s direct supervisor, says that, while UCLA’s players have made mistakes, its coaches take academics seriously and have never breached academic protocol. “We never feel pressure; this is a special place,” she says. “I wouldn’t work here if I did.”

Mr. Broussard denies encouraging a grade change. “To insinuate that I would pressure anyone to do something unethical or not follow policy is, quite frankly, insulting and just flat wrong,” he said in a written statement to The Chronicle.

As for Mr. Collier, he decided to leave UCLA in January. He spoke with The Chronicle about his experience, sharing emails and documents that detail a grade change and allegations of academic misconduct. They provide a rare window into big-time athletics and the challenge of keeping players eligible while maintaining academic integrity.

At a time when college athletes have enrolled in fake classes, taken online courses in which someone else did their work, and participated in other fraudulent schemes, the problems at UCLA might seem small. But they illustrate how charged the relationship between athletics and academics has become, even at a place that has held itself above the fray.

UCLA officials deny having such problems; the university’s record in this case, they say, is unblemished. It is Mr. Collier’s story, they say, that is flawed. UCLA has sought to discredit Mr. Collier, saying he was incompetent and that his inattention to detail led to a series of errors during his 16 months on the job. University officials say he was careless with records, inflexible with students, and unable to build trust with coaches.

But he was never placed on disciplinary probation. Upon his resignation, he received a positive letter of recommendation from Mike Casillas, director of student-athlete counseling, with whom he worked closely.

In his letter, Mr. Casillas described Mr. Collier as quick to learn, thorough, and a good communicator. “The energy and enthusiasm that he brings to work each and every day is contagious and the entire staff and students welcome and appreciate it,” wrote Mr. Casillas, a longtime UCLA staff member who was on the committee that hired Mr. Collier. (The university says that Mr. Casillas wasn’t informed about his problems.)

In response to allegations that Mr. Collier planned to make in this article, the university sent him a cease-and-desist letter. It demanded that he halt disclosure of student data and turn over the student records in his possession. The university also sent a cease-and-desist letter to The Chronicle, cautioning against publishing information obtained from confidential educational records.

Growing up, Mr. Collier found that his passion for sports often got in the way of his studies. But his parents, both educators, would not tolerate his falling behind. One day in seventh grade, he says, his father asked him to read a newspaper story aloud. His parents were surprised at how much trouble he had. They insisted that he quit the basketball team.

As a student, he sometimes had to read sentences three or four times to understand them and once used a dictation program to help him write. He went on to get an undergraduate degree at Southern University, in Louisiana, and a master’s in work-force development at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. If he could overcome his deficiencies, he knew he could help others do the same. For much of his life, he had watched fellow African-American athletes struggle in school. At UCLA he found that many players were clearly capable intellectually. The problem was the people surrounding them. Unlike his parents, he says, the people close to many elite players often fail to hold them accountable.

“I didn’t have a single dumb athlete” at UCLA, he says. “Unprepared? Yes. But the stigma on campus that these guys were dumb and didn’t care was just not fair.”

He knew that many players hoped to use UCLA as a springboard to the NBA, but he challenged them to do more than train their bodies. He brought up Jackie Robinson, who played four sports here before breaking the color barrier in baseball, to illustrate how UCLA has prepared students to do great things. He embraced the philosophies of John Wooden, the revered UCLA basketball coach who won 10 national titles and who developed the “pyramid of success,” a set of principles designed to teach character.

Mr. Wooden viewed himself as a teacher as much as a coach, and his philosophies, which stressed such values as hard work and self-control, permeate the university. His lessons on leadership are distilled on banners that surround the athletics facility named after him. And his work, which included more than a dozen books, is referenced in classes here. Mr. Wooden’s success — at one point he won seven straight NCAA titles — and the ideals he espoused have bred what some observers call a culture of exceptionalism on campus.

Today, 40 years after Mr. Wooden’s retirement, a key goal of UCLA’s academic-support staff is to develop self-sufficient students. The concept is highlighted in the department’s mission statement, and Ms. Rivera, associate athletic director for academic and student services, says she spends time during player orientation explaining its importance.

According to its mission statement, the job of UCLA’s academic-support unit is to promote a “healthy balance between academics and athletics … setting forth the ethical standards of integrity, excellence, accountability, respect, and service.”

During Mr. Collier’s time at UCLA, one problem he encountered was lack of attendance, at classes and at academic-advising appointments, according to advising records he kept. He shared them with The Chronicle on the condition that players’ names not be used. Without those building blocks, Mr. Collier says, serious academic problems weren’t far behind. In one six-week stretch last season, one player missed five mandatory academic-support appointments and was an hour or so late to two others, the records show.

When the player did show up for academic support, he was sometimes unprepared. On at least two occasions, he didn’t bring any books or class material, and spent most of his time texting.

One day a mentor who worked for Mr. Collier asked the player how his courses were going and encouraged him to check his grades online. He refused.

“When I asked him if he had gotten any feedback on his Af-Am midterm,” his mentor wrote in a record of the session, “he said, ‘Nah, my professor said I’m Gucci.’ "

Another day, a different player showed up in the academic-support unit wearing a teammate’s backpack. He had already been to two classes but hadn’t noticed that he had the wrong books.

The team had a number of students who earned B averages and above. But several players had problems meeting basic academic requirements. One athlete made several mistakes in a document he had prepared for a speech class, his mentor wrote, and had to be taught the “importance of capitalizing the first letter of names, places, and dates.”

University officials question the reliability of Mr. Collier and his data. For example, they say the capitalization errors occurred only in notes used for a presentation, not in anything that had to be turned in. UCLA officials also pointed to a time when Mr. Collier gave Ms. Rivera an inaccurate account of a player’s mentoring session and another time when, they say, he failed to give coaches timely information about exams that had to be proctored on a trip. Other times, they say, he failed to notify players of academic-support appointments, and they argued that some of the players’ absences were actually Mr. Collier’s fault. (He acknowledges an occasional miscommunication, but disputes that the attendance problems were anyone’s but the players’.)

University officials also say that the academic advisers’ notes were stored in a Google document that Mr. Collier created, and that the information should not be trusted. But two former UCLA mentors who worked with Mr. Collier confirmed that they had access to the file and entered the data themselves, putting their initials beside their write-ups.

Rick Bowmer, AP Images

At first Mr. Collier was confident that he could help get players on the right path, and that the coaches would be his allies. He informed the coaching staff about the problems he saw, sharing details in weekly emails to Mr. Broussard. In a memo Mr. Collier sent the basketball staff in February 2014, he noted that the team’s players had missed 17 class days during the winter quarter, more than one-third of the term. (The university doesn’t dispute the absences but says they totaled 16 days.)

Professors were refusing to provide valid excuses for games, he wrote, and the travel schedule had “greatly reduced” course options.

“Is it possible to practice at the competition venue after arrival versus practicing prior to departure?” he suggested. “This would at least allow the guys to attend their morning classes.”

Mr. Collier says the coaching staff never changed the practice policy. Ms. Rivera acknowledges that there were times the team practiced before trips, but the university, she adds, is “very conscientious” about missed class time. This year, she says, the team has reduced its planned time away from campus by more than 25 percent, reflecting a desire to put less of a burden on students.

But during the season, basketball takes up much of the afternoons. That prevented academic advisers from holding many study sessions until after dinner, Mr. Collier says, when students were often too tired to pay attention. Mr. Collier says he asked the coaches to adjust the schedule but could not persuade them to change it.

Among basketball coaches, Mr. Alford is considered a good guy to work for. He gives his assistants autonomy and has retained them as he’s moved up the ranks. He delegates day-to-day academic responsibilities to Mr. Broussard, but he is involved in high-level conversations about academic matters. In an email Mr. Alford sent to Mr. Collier in April 2014 that the university shared with The Chronicle, he wrote, “Just make sure all of our guys are doing what they are suppose to. I’ve said it enough to you and the rest of academics all players should have a target Gpa of 2.6 anything below that is unacceptable, period!” (Through a university spokesman, Mr. Alford declined an interview request, saying he could not talk about student records.)

At one point, coaches kept a player out of practice for two weeks so he could spend more time with academic advisers. Another time, they made the entire team run extra during practice because a few players had missed academic appointments. The punishment, Mr. Collier told Ms. Rivera in an email last year, helped curb attendance problems.

But Mr. Alford’s distance from daily academic issues, Mr. Collier says, meant that little problems sometimes snowballed, putting more pressure on academic advisers to “make miracles.” When they couldn’t, or when players faced the possibility of losing their NCAA eligibility, Mr. Alford would sometimes blame the academic counselors, Mr. Collier says.

Kenny Donaldson, the team’s academic coordinator from 2003 to 2013, including the first six months of Mr. Alford’s tenure, says academic advisers sometimes feel that they are held responsible when players fail to meet their academic obligations. “Coaches may not necessarily say that, but it’s the feeling you get,” says Mr. Donaldson, who left the job when his wife took a position in another state.

Mr. Collier, he says, wanted Mr. Alford to back him up whenever he raised concerns. But that level of trust, Mr. Donaldson says, takes time to build with coaches. “I don’t think it’s a fault of Will’s or a fault of Coach Alford’s,” he says. “I just don’t think they ever got on the same page.”

UCLA men’s basketball players were accused of academic violations at least three times during Mr. Collier’s 16-month tenure. One time a professor spotted two sets of handwriting on a midterm a player had turned in, according to an email Mr. Collier showed The Chronicle. Another time an instructor questioned the progress the same player had made on a paper, asking to see a draft. The player said his previous versions were on his computer, but when he tried to show Mr. Collier his work he couldn’t find it. The student later claimed that he must have written over the draft, but academic advisers could not verify that.

The instructor reported the case to the dean of students’ office, which found that the player could not substantiate the improvements that were made in his work. His penalty: a one-term suspension from the university.

Another time, a different player was asked to explain the contents of a paper. The dean of students’ office found him responsible for plagiarism. He, too, was suspended from the university.

Both suspensions happened during the summer, allowing the players to get back on the court the following season. Neither incident led to NCAA sanctions, Ms. Rivera says, as the university did not find any institutional complicity in the cheating.

As part of their suspensions, Mr. Collier says, both players had to write a short paper reflecting on what they had learned. Mr. Collier provided The Chronicle with a copy of one of the papers, in which the author claims he was discriminated against.

“African-American athlete paper is the only paper taken up in a class of 20 very weird to me but it was perceived as normal,” the student wrote.

In his paper, the player criticized Mr. Collier, saying that the incident “could have been settled when I asked my academic advisor to drop my class thinking that my advisor would act as an adult.”

He also had harsh words for the instructor: “I’m not aware of the teacher’s name who reported me,” he wrote. “I tend to often forget names of people with no importance.”

One lesson he learned: “It really has helped me understand how much my coaches fight for me and really have my back,” the player wrote. “Sad to say they are the only ones at UCLA who do.”

Mr. Collier says he asked the coaches if he could read the paper before it was submitted, and urged them not to let the player turn it in. The player eventually wrote a paper that was more contrite.

At the beginning of the fall quarter, just over a year since Mr. Collier had started his job, he and Ms. Rivera met with the coaching staff and the student who had plagiarized. To Mr. Collier, the gathering offered coaches a chance to keep the academic pressure on a player with a pattern of problems.

But he quickly realized that this was not their intention. Before the meeting started, the coaches told him that they had lost contact with the player during the summer and worried that he might transfer. The last thing they wanted, they told Mr. Collier, was to anger him.

During the meeting, Mr. Alford flipped through advising records that described multiple missed classes and academic-support sessions. Mr. Collier says the coach soft-pedaled the problems, telling the student he needed to “clean up” his academics. But the coaches did not make him sit him out any games, a punishment that Mr. Collier felt would have sent a more serious message about academics. (UCLA declined to make any students available for comment.)

Ms. Rivera had a different takeaway. She felt that the meeting was “extremely productive” and that the student left understanding the severity of his academic situation. She says both she and Mr. Alford emphasized that the player must start making serious changes in his academic behavior or risk further penalties.

Mr. Collier, however, was so distraught with the outcome and the tensions he felt in the room that he called his pastor for advice. The pastor, Caleb Kaltenbach, says he spoke with Mr. Collier several times last year about his concerns with the coaches. The pastor says he asked Mr. Collier: If you’re in an environment where you’re not feeling supported, what purpose are you serving?

Rich Clarkson, Sports Illustrated, Getty Images

Mr. Kaltenbach says he knew Mr. Wooden, who was a member of his previous church. Based on what Mr. Collier said about the current coaches, he says, they had not demonstrated the same leadership as the legendary UCLA coach. “I remember telling Will how incredibly important it was that he should take a stand, and he was in good company with people I knew like Coach Wooden, who stood for the right things when no one else was willing to stand.”

By that point, all Mr. Collier wanted was for players to show up for their appointments and be courteous to the staff. He was beyond expecting self-sufficient learners.

Michelle Strausman, who served as an academic mentor for the men’s basketball team last season, says she worked with players who missed tutoring sessions or did not show up prepared to work. She grew frustrated that Mr. Broussard did not appear to step in.

“I don’t know if he appreciated my concerns I would share to Will,” says Ms. Strausman, now an admissions counselor at Stanford University.

“Will’s incentives and priorities were understandably very different and at odds with the coaches,” she says. “I don’t know if it was because they didn’t care, but it’s not how they’re evaluated by the community.

“Nobody asks the coach at UCLA, ‘How are your kids doing academically?’ " she adds. “They ask, ‘Do you think you’ll make it to the championship this year?’ "

Last December, Mr. Collier reached a breaking point. A student who had missed a high number of classes that quarter had received a letter grade lower than he needed in a communications course, leaving him ineligible for the team.

After hearing the news, Mr. Collier informed Mr. Broussard. According to Mr. Collier, the assistant coach wanted him to get the grade changed before Mr. Alford found out.

Mr. Collier refused. If the student wanted a different grade, Mr. Collier told the coach, he would have to request it himself.

In his statement, Mr. Broussard denied pressuring Mr. Collier to push for a grade change, saying that it was his “responsibility to maintain an open line of communication with our academic advisors, make sure our young men are being attentive to their studies and double, even triple, check with academics to find out if they need our coaching staff’s help holding guys accountable.

“When you consider that we’re largely dealing with teenagers, a group still learning how to make the right decisions — decisions that can seriously impact their lives today, tomorrow and 10 years from now,” he added, “I would hope everyone involved with our program feels the pressure that comes with having these young men under our watch.”

According to UCLA policy, coaches are prohibited from contacting instructors. Members of the academic-support staff may not discuss or imply details about a player’s academic standing or encourage athletes to seek a grade change or an incomplete in a class. Grade decisions, the policy says, are “solely at the discretion of the professor.”

The day before Christmas, the professor emailed Mr. Casillas, director of student-athlete counseling, to say that he planned to give the player a chance to provide valid excuses for his absences. If the player could do so, the professor wrote, he would consider changing the grade.

“I want to preserve the academic integrity of the class; be fair to the other students who took the course; and use this situation as a valuable, helpful experience” for the player, the professor wrote. (To protect the identity of the student, The Chronicle is not identifying the professor.)

On December 28, the professor emailed to say that he and the player had come to an agreement. “He will attend six classes, actively participating in class discussions in Winter, 2015; and will make a five-minute oral presentation on a John Wooden speech,” the professor wrote. By successfully completing those requirements, the professor said, the player would earn a B in his fall 2014 class.

In an interview, the professor said that the player contacted him on his own and explained that he had a medical problem that had prevented him from attending class. The professor says he felt comfortable with the excuse given by the player, who he says fulfilled his commitments the next quarter.

At the time, the professor believed that he handled the situation appropriately. But in retrospect, he says, he wishes that he had given the player an incomplete. “If I had done that,” he says, “we wouldn’t even be talking.”

According to UCLA policy, there are only two reasons that a student’s grade may be changed: a miscalculation or an administrative error. Any time an athlete’s grade is changed, it must be reviewed by the faculty athletics representative to ensure that the athlete did not receive a benefit that is not available to other students. In this case, the university determined that the change happened in accordance with policy, Ms. Rivera says, and the player was reinstated.

Mr. Collier was stunned: A professor allowed a player to make up coursework during a subsequent term, letting him earn a grade for work he had not yet done.

After that, Mr. Collier told Ms. Rivera that he planned to look for other opportunities, and he began applying for jobs outside of athletics.

Just before the new year, Ms. Rivera emailed Mr. Collier, acknowledging that the fall season had been particularly difficult for him and that he needed a “well-deserved break.” As he looked to get out, she turned over his men’s-basketball responsibilities to another staff member.

“I also want the rest of your time at UCLA to be positive, emotionally and professionally, and I think that continuing to work with men’s basketball will continue to take an emotional toll on you, especially since I do not see the coaching staff changing their ways,” she wrote. “Focusing solely on women’s basketball will provide you with an opportunity to not participate in such an unhealthy environment and allow you to continue to make a real difference with a team that is more receptive and willing to engage academically.”

In mid-January, Mr. Collier landed a management job in a different field, and he put in his notice.

“It is clear to me that I will not be able to resolve my differences with Coach Alford’s approach to education,” he wrote to Ms. Rivera. “These conflicts have affected my ability to manage my responsibilities and have left me feeling uncertain about my future in college athletics.”

In a questionnaire given to departing employees, Mr. Collier elaborated on his concerns. Although he had respect for the academic-services staff, he wrote, he had expected more of UCLA.

“I really thought I could do something special there,” he says now. “I try not to think about it too much, but there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not really using my talents. I want to be someone who uses his talents with the people who need it the most.”

Brad Wolverton is a senior writer who covers college sports. Follow him on Twitter @bradwolverton and on Facebook