Reading, Pa. — Penn State Berks has completed the five-year provisional process and obtained full National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III Membership, as announced on the NCAA Web site on Aug. 13.
The process actually began when Chancellor Susan Phillips Speece joined Penn State Berks in 2001 and decided that it was time to make a change with the campus's athletic programs. In 2003, the campus started the NCAA Division III provisional process, beginning the transition from the Commonwealth Campus Athletic Conference to the North Eastern Athletic Conference.
"When you look at why students select schools, one of the criteria is the quality of the athletic programs," explained Speece. "As a result of our involvement in NCAA, it is fair to state that at a minimum, 125 students came to Penn State Berks.
"Each year, approximately 35 of our student-athletes receive scholar-athlete awards, which mean that they have a GPA of 3.0 or better," she continued. "While our main goal is providing outstanding educational opportunities for our students, some of that education and leadership training comes from the co-curricular experiences, the most prominent being athletics."
The campus's acceptance as full members of the NCAA Division III will create new opportunities for student athletes to compete at the national level. Penn State Berks is competing in the North Eastern Athletic Conference, which is comprised of schools across New York and Pennsylvania. The NEAC champions in the nine major sports sponsored will receive automatic qualifiers into the NCAA tournament.
In the campus's five years in the conference, there has been success at all levels:
— The women's tennis team captured three conference championships in 2004, 2006 and 2007;
— The men's tennis team captured two conference championships in 2005 and 2008;
— Following the 2007-2008 year, Berks placed 35 players on NEAC All-Conference Teams, in addition to the women's basketball and men's tennis players of the year.
"Now that we are fully vetted into NCAA, Penn State Berks will focus on the development of athletics facilities on campus to make us more competitive with other NCAA Division III institutions," Speece said. "In order to provide the kind of facilities that reflect our excellence, we will be looking to add scoreboards for our athletic fields, dugouts on our baseball and softball fields, shot clocks for our basketball teams, tables for our basketball games, and chairs for basketball and volleyball games."
For information, contact Kate Corcoran at (610) 396-6415.