Dean's Corner: On Athletics

2025 will mark the 110th anniversary of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC), which Caltech—then still Throop Polytechnic Institute—helped found, alongside our longtime academic neighbors, Occidental College, Pomona College, University of Redlands, and Whittier College. Since before the Institute bore its present name, in other words, athletics has played a vital role in the Caltech experience as a means of supporting students’ overall health and wellbeing. Caltech athletes, present and past, have pursued rigorous courses of study alongside their practices and games, community volunteer work, campus leadership roles, and other extracurriculars. The same resilience, motivation, and determination that allow one to excel in the pool or on the field have obvious benefits in the classroom and lab as well, as our stellar student-athletes make clear.

This past Monday, November 4, I attended the meeting co-hosted with my colleagues, Professor Gil Refael and Professor Omer Tamuz, that sought to answer questions and concerns about changes to the Athletics program. These changes follow in the wake of the Faculty Board resolution, passed in June, that voted to alter the weight accorded to recruited athletes in our admissions process. The resolution stated that any alteration to this weight is to be taken gradually, deliberately, and with regular consultation of Institute leadership over a period of years. It also reaffirmed our commitment to remaining a member of the SCIAC conference we helped to charter.

Admissions decisions are the most difficult and sensitive that any university faces, and each member of this community feels the impact of those decisions personally. Caltech admits students with exceptional STEM passion and talent as well as the creativity and drive to thrive in our small, close-knit community. Every student here has been welcomed to campus on these terms. The wide range of extracurricular talents that students bring to campus—whether athletic, artistic, musical, or otherwise—all contribute to the richness of our larger community and showcase the dedication and breadth of the student body as a whole. But with an average matriculating class of fewer than 250 students, we are obliged to constantly evaluate and update our admissions practices. The Faculty Board felt it important not to give specific weight to certain extracurricular pursuits over others and thus voted to step down the visibility of athletic recruitment efforts over time.

This decision has hit our student-athletes especially hard. We heard that in no uncertain terms Monday night. Students voiced anger, pain, frustration, and uncertainty; they let us know how difficult it is to work hard in classes and on their teams only to feel undervalued in their contributions and doubted in their commitment to academics.

These concerns moved me to write from my dual perspectives as faculty and a member of Institute administration. One of the greatest privileges of my new role has been getting to know an ever-wider spectrum of the student body. The brilliance and uniqueness of this undergraduate community inspires me daily, and no one here reduces, nor should be reduced, to a single aspect of their identity. We are all balancing work and life, deadlines and demands on our time. We are all here, students and faculty alike, because of our commitment to knowledge and discovery. And we are all bound by the Caltech Code of Conduct, which holds that “Every member of the Caltech community treats one another with dignity and respect.”

As we move forward with changes brought by the June resolution, I want to emphasize two points. First is our commitment to remaining in SCIAC. Caltech Athletics has always been about more than winning games. Since the beginning of the program, it has embodied the perseverance, ingenuity, and community-spiritedness of the Caltech student body as a whole. Stepping down the visibility of recruitment in the admissions process will proceed in conjunction with annual, data-informed assessments of the impact on teams and the program as a whole, as we maintain Caltech’s Division III status.

Second is the importance of student voices and perspectives to the conversation around athletics. Over and over again on Monday, I heard students express frustration at being talked about without being offered venues to represent themselves and their experience. That should not be the case going forward, and I invite all members of our student community to reach out with their ideas, concerns, and suggestions. There is no easy path into or through Caltech, and all of us of are here because we appreciate the challenge and rewards of tackling hard problems. The challenge that lies ahead will require our collective creativity and generosity to accomplish well, but if any group of individuals is capable of finding a positive and meaningful solution, I know it to be this one.