Tucked away in a little nook between The Bryce Jordan Center and the Nittany Apartment complex, where the majority of Penn State student-athletes live, is a small building called the East Area Locker Room. It's not well-known to most, but to student-athletes, it's a second home.

Upstairs, the hallway is silent, as is a well-lit room with bare gray walls and partitions on the tables. At 7:30 on a Tuesday evening, only a few students are in the room, poring over texts or scribbling math problems into a notebook. Soon, though, there will be more.

For Penn State student-athletes, evening study hall becomes as much a part of their daily routine as team practices. The university stresses that freshman student-athletes get off to a strong academic start, which is why all freshmen are required to put in at least seven and a half study-hall hours each week.

Many big-time NCAA programs excel on the field but are far less productive off of it, as their graduation rates range from subpar to dismal. This is not the case at Penn State, which expects its athletes to graduate. And when the numbers are examined, the expectations usually are met.

Of the last four student-athlete classes studied by the NCAA (of players who entered as freshmen in 1991, '92, '93 and '94 and who earned or failed to earn a degree within six years), Penn State graduated an average of 77 percent -- second best in the Big Ten. The school's averages in the three major sports -- football and men's and women's basketball -- also were among the conference's best, at 70 percent, 80 percent and 82 percent, respectively.

At Penn State, it's all about establishing a "culture," an environment where importance is placed on academics early and maintained throughout an athlete's stay at the university. While many athletic programs at big-time Division I schools struggle to meet NCAA graduation standards, this culture consistently helps put Penn State among the nation's best.

"Penn State has always had a great culture for academics and athletics being combined," Athletic Director Tim Curley said. "And I think the credit to the Faculty Senate that set the eligibility standards way back when, as well as our coaches, who have been great leaders in this area and further enhanced that culture."

Bringing in the best and the brightest

Some schools place a higher priority on ensuring their big-time players make it to graduation day than others. Or maybe the priority is the same, but the results certainly aren't. For instance, Northwestern University graduated 73 percent of its basketball players enrolled in the four entering classes between 1991 and 1994, while the University of Memphis graduated none.

And of the Top 10 college football teams in the most recent Associated Press Poll, only four graduated a majority of their players in those four classes.

Most of the graduation rates for student-athletes at Division I-A schools are directly proportional to the overall graduation rates. The national graduation rate for all Division I college students is 56 percent, while the average for student-athletes is only slightly higher at 58 percent. However, there are a few athletic programs that are able to substantially exceed their own student-body rate, and a few that fall not only woefully short of NCAA standards, but below their university's as well.

Fifteen Division I institutions failed to graduate a single male basketball player from the class of 1994-'95. By contrast, only one -- Stanford University -- graduated all of its male basketball players. In fact, the overall NCAA rate for male players was four of 10 -- the lowest in 11 years.

What do the rates mean?

One problem with judging a school's ability to consistently graduate its athletes has to do with the way the statistics are compiled. There can be a number of confounding factors that can lead to deceiving data, such as student-athletes leaving school early to turn professional, or athletes deciding to transfer to another university.

"You have to look at two things," Curley said. "First, how the rates are calculated."

The NCAA has studied graduation rates each year since 1984, comparing the rates of student-athletes at each institution with those of that university's overall student body. Rates are also calculated by individual sport, by gender and racial or ethnic group. Transfers are calculated separately, but a student who transfers prior to graduation counts as a non-graduate at the university he or she transferred from.

The second part of the procedure, Curley said, is taking into consideration the type of students the school brings in.

"It starts at the beginning, with the standards you have on the front end," he said.

Scott Kretchmar, a kinesiology professor who is Penn State's NCAA Faculty Representative, agrees. Kretchmar's primary responsibility is to help ensure that each student-athlete maintains academic eligibility. He says that his job is made a lot easier by student-athletes who made the grade even before they came to Penn State.

"I can't emphasize that enough," he said "We take care to bring students into Penn State who have a high probability of graduating."

Keeping athletes focused on their studies is just as important, especially during freshman year, when in addition to an increased classroom workload and a more intensive practice schedule, student-athletes must also adjust to being away from home.

The way to ensure that athletes graduate is simple, said Northwestern Athletic Director Rick Taylor from his office in Evanston, Ill. -- bring in athletes that you know will make the grade, because they've already made it.

"I think it's very easy," said Taylor, whose school averaged a stellar 92 percent student-athlete graduation rate the last four years. "We admit kids that can do the work at Northwestern. I think it's hypocritical to talk about graduation rates when we should talk about initial eligibility, especially in football and men's basketball."

Though Northwestern admits the nation's top students, the university understands the rigorous adjustment period that all students, especially student-athletes, endure.

"They're still 17- and 18-year-old kids," Taylor said. "You have to remember there's a lot of factors that go into adjusting to a college -- managing time, social life, being away from parents. They also do a tremendous amount of work."

Rookie routines

Many student-athletes, such as Penn State women's basketball player Courtney Upshaw, take the changes in stride. An advertising and public relations major, Upshaw said she has adjusted to the rigors of life for the student-athlete at a big-time university -- with a substantial nod to Diana Kenepp, director of Penn State's Morgan Center for Academic Support for Student-Athletes, and her staff.

"I don't think I would have made it on my own," said Upshaw, who weathered the freshman adjustment period well and now starts as a sophomore for Rene Portland's squad.

The Morgan Center, considered one of the nation's best and emulated by a number of other institutions, played a key role in Courtney's courting.

"I liked the academic support system that was here," she said. "How people would stay on top of me, especially my freshman year."

During that freshman year, Upshaw's daily itinerary went something like this -- she would get up for an 8 a.m. class, finish classes around noon, then lunch, then head to the gym around 1:30 or so. After practice, she'd go to the training table with her teammates, then to study hall and finally return to her room around 10 p.m.

"That was the toughest part," said Upshaw, who now advises her new freshman teammates to keep in continuous contact with their advisers. "I'd leave the room at a quarter to eight and not get back until after 10."

That was just a practice day. Upshaw also travels all over the country for games. She said she tries to get most of her schoolwork done before road trips, but it's not uncommon to see many student-athletes toting textbooks on flights.

Upshaw said most of her professors have been "very understanding" of all that being a student-athlete entails.

"They understand that you have a pretty rough schedule, that being a student-athlete is a little more difficult than being an average student," she said.

Upshaw typifies athletes who have shown the ability to apply a solid work ethic on the court and off it. But the process can be trying, to say the least, for many.

"We've seen a number of situations where a student has a hard time adjusting academically, athletically or socially," Curley said. "The first year is maybe a little exploratory."

Establishing "the culture"

To help ease student-athletes through this often difficult transition, Division I-A schools have extensive academic support programs. Kenepp and her staff instill an aggressive studying approach in athletes during their freshman year, hoping that it will set the tone for all that follow.

"We hope students have developed those study skills by their second year," Kenepp said. "After their first year, they'll check in, not weekly but periodically."

The required amount of study hours for a freshman student-athlete varies team to team, but Kenepp said the university's minimum is the seven and one-half hours.

Student-athletes also meet regularly with advisers to discuss grades and study habits.

"The at-risk students are so coachable and amenable to suggestions," Kenepp said. "We're more concerned with the overconfident ones."

Many athletes who excelled in the classroom without exerting much effort in high school are taken aback by the increased college workload. Others enter school struggling to keep their heads above water from the get-go. Kenepp and her staff are responsible for maintaining the eligibility of student-athletes on both ends of the spectrum, and all of the ones in between.

"We get so many e-mails from former athletes who thank us for our help," Kenepp said "We call them our 'love notes.'"

Getting student-athletes to made the grade once they arrive at college is Kenepp's responsibility, but the task of finding the ones who have what it takes falls upon the teams' recruiters, who have little more to work with than SAT scores and transcripts.

"The first thing we find out is what kind of students they are," Curley said. "Whether or not they can qualify with our standards up front."

Recruiters visit hundreds of prospective athletes at high schools across the country each year, but they won't really know what kind of student-athlete they have -- on the field as well as off it -- until the athlete arrives on campus in the fall.

"We have no contact with the student-athletes prior to their first visit," Kenepp said. "During that visit, parents or students will discuss concerns with the coaches and with us."

Making the grade

To meet the current initial academic-eligibility standards for "qualifiers," student-athletes must have completed a high-school core of at least 13 academic courses in appropriate core areas. They also must have obtained a minimum core grade-point average of 2.0 with an SAT score of at least 1010. The minimum SAT score for students with a 2.5 or higher is set at 820.

But is there really that much -- or any -- difference in academic support between the "haves" and the "have-nots?" And if there is, can the difference be traced to an institution's financial support of tutoring and other special services?

"To date, there has been no linking of graduation rates with school or financial support," Kretchmar said.

Should all schools have equal expectations?

Kretchmar spoke of possible repercussions for schools that do not meet standards that recently were put forward by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.

"For the programs that did not graduate their players at a 50 percent rate, you reduce the number of available scholarships," Kretchmar said.

Grand Experimentation

Joe Paterno's "Grand Experiment" is a good example of one coach's plan to build and maintain a successful athletic program without sacrificing academic standards. In "The Paterno Legacy" (1998), Bob Smizik took one of the famous coach's quotes from the late 1960s -- when Penn State had just begun to establish itself as a national football power -- to summarize the idea.

"Everybody assumes if you have a great football team there have to be sacrifices in the area of academic standards," Paterno said at the time. "People tell me it can't be done without sacrificing standards. They tell me I'm daydreaming."

Those who called Paterno a daydreamer stuck a pretty large collective foot in their collective mouth -- Penn State has been one of the winningest teams in the country during Paterno's 37-year tenure, all the while ranking among the nation's leaders in graduation rates.

During the past two seasons, Paterno's teams have fallen on the field. Penn State has received some criticism for not recruiting top-notch athletes from junior colleges, which is what schools such as the University of Miami, Kansas State University and Oregon State University do regularly.

At Penn State, however, incentive to keep the grades up is more than just a desire for a diploma -- if Paterno's Nittany Lions can't cut it in the classroom, they don't play. Period.

"Being student-athletes, you've got to worry about a lot of stuff," said defensive back Rich Gardner. "Class is the biggest of all. You don't want to put yourself in a position where you can't play."

Joe Iorio, the Lions' starting center, is in his third year of both football and classes and is a dean's list student in the College of Information Sciences and Technology. Like many student-athletes, Iorio understands the importance of structure when it comes to making the grade.

"I came from a Catholic school, where I learned to regulate my work habits," he said. "But when a lot of people get to college, they have trouble with that because they don't know how to do it."

Penn State's major sports -- football and men's and women's basketball -- bring in plenty of revenue, part of which is used to fund the academic support programs. But sports generate just as much money at the University of Oklahoma, so why did it fail to graduate a single member of the men's basketball team's freshman class of 1994?

A factor that can affect rates is how many athletes leave school early for the NBA or the NFL. It happens more and more each year -- not only with athletes who have one year of eligibility remaining, but sometimes, two or three.

When the pros come calling. . .

What about these student-athletes, the ones who have what it takes to play in the pros, such as many of the stars at Michigan, Penn State or other big-name football programs? Finishing a term paper can become even more of a nuisance is a player knows he could be a Top 10 draft pick making millions of dollars a year if he leaves school early.

"There are legitimate cases where kids may have to go into the NBA or the NFL," Northwestern's Taylor said. His school hasn't exactly been a breeding ground for players in either professional league, sending only a select few to the next level, but other schools, Penn State among them, face the issue each year.

Should universities with top-notch athletic programs and low graduation rates be punished for sending their players to the pros before they graduate?

"If there's any doubt in their minds, we encourage them to come back, get their degree," Curley said. "But, there are extenuating circumstances."

For many student-athletes, the issue runs deeper than simply the diploma itself. They don't see Mercedes-Benzes or 14-bedroom mansions behind the loaded contracts being presented to them, but rather opportunities to provide a better lifestyle for themselves and their families.

Take the case of former Nittany Lion football star Brandon Short, who had the opportunity to leave Penn State after his junior season and make the jump to the NFL. Weighing heavily on Short's decision was how poor his family was. But he decided to stay and play his senior season, earn his degree and join the pros afterwards.

Short found what many athletes find -- that the pros aren't going anywhere, and that a player can be just as successful -- in many cases, more so -- in the pros if he sticks around for his final year of eligibility, earning a high-quality education in the process.

"That says an awful lot about Brandon, where his priorities are," Curley said. "But we realize that every situation's different. I don't criticize someone who makes a different decision."

Raising the bar

Keeping a high academic standard goes beyond establishing high standards at the support level. The Morgan Center could not have had the impact it has had at Penn State without the support it has received from the university.

"You need commitment from the central administration first," Kenepp said. "The university has to expect student-athletes to be students first."

Kenepp said another key to Penn State's academic success is due to the fact that Curley has a seat on university president Graham Spanier's Presidential Council.

"It's unlikely an athletic director would have the same sensitivity if he wasn't (involved)," she said.

Curley, who helped develop the Morgan Center in the 1980s when he was an assistant athletic director, said the process of maintaining high standards and bringing in exceptional student-athletes is cyclical.

"If you didn't have any or less standards you would not have access to those kinds of students," Curley said.

The lofty standards Penn State has established are one of the reasons that Nittany Lion athletes garnered 227 Academic All-Big Ten honorees to lead the conference for the fifth consecutive year in 2000-2001.

Reaching toward improvement

Some schools just don't make the grade, for one reason or another. Obviously, not all universities share the annual graduation success rates of Northwestern or Penn State.

For instance, although the University of Cincinnati's overall graduation rates for student-athletes greatly exceed those of the school's overall student body, the men's basketball program has graduated only eight percent of its players over the last four measured years -- and none from the freshman class of 1994.

Like Penn State, Cincinnati has its own academic support staff, required study hours for freshmen and hundreds of thousands of dollars at its disposal to facilitate the guidance process. What, then, is the disparity, especially on the hardwood, where the Lions graduate 80 percent of their players compared to the Bearcats' eight?

"Our basketball program has relied a lot on junior-college recruiting," said Cincinnati Assistant Athletic Director and Media Relations Director Tom Hathaway. "Two years at a junior college does not necessarily transfer into two years of study at a four-year school. That works against you a little bit toward the graduation rate."

What's to be done

There are a number of factors that can have substantial effects on graduation rates, including how many athletes transfer to another college or how many leave school early to pursue professional careers.

What are the differences between the "haves" and the "have-nots?" Why aren't the schools struggling to graduate a majority of their players establishing the same kind of "culture" that exists at Penn State, Michigan or Northwestern?

"Our philosophy has always been emphasizing the student in student-athlete," Kenepp said. "And ensure that they're provided with a wealth of opportunities."

Some schools that aren't measuring up, though, can't be blamed for lack of trying. The academic support centers at Penn State and Stanford have been emulated for years. The disparity in grades doesn't match up to the disparity in academic support.

"I don't know that there's that much difference," Cincinnati's Hathaway said. "There may have been 20 years ago. But now, people know what other people are doing. If someone's found this or that to work, other people will try to adopt it."