Every week, the Sports Information department will post a "Did You Know?" tidbit to the website.
This week's interesting tidbit is: Did you know that Purchase College's Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR), Dr. Ryan Taylor, has been selected to attend the 2025 NCAA Division III Faculty Athletics Representative Institute? The event will take place on November 18–22 in Indianapolis, in conjunction with the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association (FARA) Annual Meeting.
Dr. Taylor was nominated by the Purchase College Athletics Department for this honor. The FAR Institute brings together representatives from across Division III for specialized leadership training focused on supporting student-athletes, maintaining academic integrity and promoting institutional oversight in intercollegiate athletics.
When asked the importance of the event, Taylor responded with "There are two parts to the program. The first couple of days is the FAR Institute. It's kind of like a training program designed to help FARs acquire some key skills and pieces of knowledge that have been proven to help us better serve the student athletes on our campus, the athletic conference we participate in and the governing functions of the Association. The second part is the Annual Meeting of the FAR Association. During this meeting FARs from across every NCAA participating campuses send representatives to offer a collective voice on intercollegiate athletics issues of national significance, as well as share best practices from the field on how we can best ensure the welfare of student-athletes, the integrity of their academic achievement, and institutional-level control of intercollegiate athletic policies."
Taylor hopes "to bring back to campus some new ways I can help support our athletics staff who serve the student athletes at Purchase. It's not a small task, given that the student athletes on our NCAA teams currently comprise 10% of the college's entire student body. But as FAR, it is my responsibility to ensure our intercollegiate athletics programs here at Purchase are doing the best they can to help those student athletes perform academically as well as athletically, and to advocate on matters of their welfare as the senior faculty advisor to the Athletic Director and the College President. I've been a member of our Intercollegiate Athletic Board ever since I joined the college (longer ago than I want to admit), but have only stepped into the official Role of FAR within the last couple of years. I always figure if you're going to do a job, you should learn how to do it to the best of your ability. This conference, I think presents me that opportunity to do that for our community."
To read more about FARA, click here.
