Gameday: A Whistle-Blower's Story of the ...

Part 3

Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Mary Willingham graduated from Loyola University in Chicago earning a degree in psychology. After spending twenty years in Corporate America working in human resources, she decided to follow her passion and pursue teaching. After her children were older, she decided to go back to school and earn her degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her master's thesis entitled Academics & Athletics - A Clash of Cultures: Division I Football Programs argues that the goal of educating student-athletes has been overlooked for the pursuit of money.

Upon graduation, Mary landed a job at UNC in the Academic Support Program as a learning specialist. She worked in this role from 2003 to 2010. In 2010, she became the assistant director for the Center for Student Success and Academic Counseling, which assisted all UNC students on an academic basis. In these roles, she began to notice that many of the student-athletes, primarily those who played on the revenue-generating sports teams, were not prepared for the academic rigor collegiate courses required. Mary was surprised that some student-athletes were admitted to the university despite having severely deficient academic abilities.

In January 2014, Mary released research that showed 60% of the 183 athletes during 2004-2012 could only read between a fourth and eighth-grade reading levels and that 8 percent to 10 percent read below a third-grade level [9]. In an interview with National Public Radio in March 2015, Willingham stated, "students were steered, or enrolled, by academic counselors to a lot of "paper classes" that were offered in the African-American studies department.”

For nearly five years, UNC denied her claims, but Willingham refused to keep quiet. After trying to report internally, she decided to go to the media. She first told her story to staff writer Dan Kane at the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina and then to national media when the university refused to admit that the classes were well known to faculty.

Caption: Mary Willingham discusses blowing the whistle on the UNC academic fraud.

[9] Willingham Critics Say She Plagiarized for Thesis. (2014, August 5). Retrieved July 24, 2015, from https://alumni.unc.edu/news/willingham-critics-say-she-plagiarized-for-thesis/