May 1, 2007
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Senior swimmer Ted Brown (Kokomo, Ind./Western) has been awarded a postgraduate scholarship through the NCAA. Brown is one of 29 male student-athletes who participated in a winter sport, which includes basketball, fencing, gymnastics, swimming and diving, indoor track and field and wrestling, to receive the $7,500 scholarship. He also becomes the first student-athlete in program history to receive an NCAA postgraduate scholarship. There also were 29 females nationwide that received the honor.
Brown ranks second all-time in program history with 10 all-BIG EAST honors. This past season, he garnered four all-conference accolades in helping the Fighting Irish to a runner-up finish at the BIG EAST Championship. Brown was an integral part in Notre Dame capturing back-to-back BIG EAST crowns in 2005 and 2006. He was on the winning 800-yard free relay, which registered a school-record time, at the 2006 BIG EAST meet. Brown also was a part of school records in the 500 free and 400 free relay during his Irish career.
Along with his swimming accomplishments, Brown has excelled in the classroom. He received the team’s Notre Dame Club of St. Joseph Valley Knute Rockne Student-Athlete Award for the 2006-07 season. Brown also has been tabbed as a College Swim Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) All-Academic performer and a BIG EAST Academic All-Star.
Brown has been involved in many extracurricular activities during his time at Notre Dame. The senior is the Assistant Executive Director of Irish Fighting for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital along with being a member of the Notre Dame Student Government Academic Affairs Committee. He also presented an undergraduate research report to the University of Notre Dame graduate school trustees with Vice President and Associate Provost Dennis Jacobs in the fall of 2005.
In addition to the winter sport honorees, the NCAA also awards 116 postgraduate scholarships to student-athletes participating in fall and spring sports in which the NCAA conducts championships or participates in as an emerging sport, for a total of 174 postgraduate scholarships annually.
Brown is the 40th Notre Dame student-athlete to be awarded the NCAA postgraduate scholarship, with the most recent recipients from Notre Dame being high jumper Stacey Cowan (2006) and women’s soccer defender Vanessa Pruzinsky (2004). Brown is the first Notre Dame student-athlete from a men’s sport to earn the NCAA postgraduate scholarship since All-America basketball forward Pat Garrity in 1998. In the eight years following Garrity’s scholarship award, six Notre Dame women’s student-athletes (from five different sports) had received NCAA postgrad scholarships: tennis player Jennifer Hall (’99), soccer forward Jenny Streiffer (’00), basketball center Ruth Riley (’01), softball pitcher Jen Sharron (’01), Pruzinsky and Cowan.
The NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship was created in 1964 to promote and encourage postgraduate education by rewarding the Association’s most accomplished student-athletes through their participation in NCAA championship and/or emerging sports. Athletics and academic achievements, as well as campus involvement, community service, volunteer activities and demonstrated leadership, are evaluated. In maintaining the highest broad-based standards in the selection process, the program aims to reward those individuals whose dedication and effort are reflective of those characteristics necessary to succeed and thrive through postgraduate study in an accredited graduate degree program.
To qualify for an NCAA postgraduate scholarship, a student-athlete must have an overall grade-point average of 3.200 (on a 4.000 scale) or its equivalent and must have performed with distinction as a member of the varsity team in the sport in which the student-athlete was nominated. The student-athlete also must intend to continue academic work beyond the baccalaureate degree as a full-time or part-time graduate student.
Nomination forms are sent to faculty athletics representatives for all sports in the fall. Selections are made three times each academic year. The application must be submitted during the appropriate seasonal category for the sport to the NCAA National Office. Candidates are screened by seven regional selection committees, and the award recipients are selected by the NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship Committee.
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