Senior woman administrator and academic coordinator Jodie Heinicka announced the grant award, which will allow her, assistant coordinator Carrie Crowell and graduate assistant Cary Bruno to ramp up an already vastly successful academic support program based in the Johnnie Emmons Academic Study Center in the NSU Athletic Fieldhosue.

"These are challenging times financially for higher education in Louisiana, at Northwestern State University and in our athletic department, so it is especially exciting to receive NCAA funding to help the student-athletes we are all here to support," said Heinicka. "We've been providing tutoring through a volunteer program in collaboration with the Louisiana Scholars College at NSU, and this grant will allow us to improve our services by adequately compensating our tutors at no cost to our department or the university."

The grant money is to be used specifically for tutoring services with a primary purpose of improving NSU's NCAA Academic Progress Rate results and enhancing student-athletes' progress toward graduation.

"We are proud of the work we're doing providing academic support for our student-athletes," said NSU athletics director Greg Burke. "This is a big step forward and I congratulate Jodie Heinicka and her staff for successfully pursuing this grant to enhance our tutoring program."

Northwestern is one of a handful of institutions regionally not to have received any penalties related to substandard performances of sports programs evaluated annually in the NCAA's six-year-old APR program. NSU's men's basketball and women's soccer teams have received national recognition from the NCAA for APR scores in the top 10 percent among the nation's Division I schools.

Applications for tutoring positions are being accepted by Heinicka and her staff. A pdf file of the application is attached to this story.