BATON ROUGE, La. – Earlier this month, sophomore sand volleyball player Emma Hiller and Colin Finnegan, a junior on the men’s swimming and diving team, represented LSU at the fall SEC Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) meeting held in Birmingham, Alabama.
The two-day conference focused on various issues including scholarships and internships, student-athlete leadership and development opportunities, campus community service projects, attendance promotions, NCAA governance and autonomy legislation, the SEC Network and student-athlete participation gifts.
“It was a great opportunity to represent LSU on a wider scale,” Hiller said. “I am thankful to have helped our voices be heard in the SEC and NCAA, so we can work towards a better student-athlete experience in our own institutions as well as throughout the conference.”
The first day was focused on comparing and contrasting the differences between the member schools. More specifically, the group looked at community service, leadership development and opportunities, attendance and promotion of all sports, and how the schools traveled and whether it was efficient or not on at the school level as well as the greater conference level.
“I think overall the meeting was a great experience,” Finnegan said. “It was really interesting to see how other Student Athlete Advisory Committee’s from around the conference handle day to day operations, as well as help out other schools by giving them insight on some things we are doing here at LSU.”
On the second day, the representatives were given a tour of SEC headquarters, as well as participating in the second session of the meeting. This session was focused on NCAA governance, as well as Financial Aid and health and wellness.
“One of the coolest parts of the trip was visiting the SEC Headquarters in Downtown Birmingham,” Finnegan said. “It definitely gave me a greater appreciation of everything that gets done behind the scenes in order to ensure the best possible student-athlete experience.”
The Cox Communications Academic Center for Student-Athletes is a 54,000 square foot facility comprised of academic affairs, student affairs and an information technology teams, serving more than 530 student-athletes. The purpose is to provide an all-inclusive, student-centered support structure for all student-athletes from matriculation, through graduation and life beyond.