welcome to the secrets of college planning i'm your host anthony uva and today we're going to get some insight and that's what makes at university of texas my guest today is the women's athletic director she is christine ponce ski and welcome to the show thanks so much yeah no problem so usually i start my guess where they went to college so when you go to school i grew up originally in western pennsylvania here a little bit east of pittsburgh my mom and dad are both from there big football country too but he asked my dad was a college athlete fortunate enough to be on a college football scholarship he moved us to northeast ohio in the mid sixty's and so i went to kent state university and stud journalism there from a seventy five to seventy nine wow great so let's go back into high school what what year did you start thinking about college what year were you starting to see what colleges were all about in and how you ended up at kent state well sure started long before high school i was very fortunate that both of mine our parents had been college educated and education was primary in our household i have four hundred sisters  alice's five girls we were all going to go to college and that was expressed at the dinner table for a time where i grade school and and by the way those days again late sixty's get into the seventies we were going to pay our own way through college because it was  you were able to do that and so we all had jobs part time the time we could babysit or work out somewhere else but at the end of the day i really started thinking about what i was going to study in  washington post stories in that era were were incredibly motivating just to see what you know journalism was true hard reporting journalism but i love sports and i you know knew what sports illustrated  was and all and the sports section of the paper so i studied journalism at kent with the intent to be a sports writer but during my undergraduate days my job again because i was paying my own way through school was to work for a college student newspaper are in various positions but i also got a break and was told to go find the sports information office and the athletics department i had no idea then that a college up by the x program actually had a publicity office and i was hired to actually do the first compilation and statistical maintenance of our women's sports program and so i was working alongside all my colleagues that were  in charge of all the other sports so i worked every football game every basketball game and was a student assistant in the sports info office it can help me pay my way through school uncomplimentary my germs of experience with the daily can stater and other things actually had my resume pretty full by the end of my college career and i i was able to continue to be employed in sports information and my first job right out of college was that i was state as a again a full time sports absolutely so now you go to kent state and how do you go from kent state to becoming the women's athletic director at the university of texas well remember the era that i went to school in again i was in high school in the seventies title nine passed in seventy two so there was true effort to organize opportunities for women not only at the high school level but at the college level and by the time i graduated from kent many inner collegiate programs across the country were merging their women sports which probably up to that point had been under maybe the physical education model and the physical it department was overseeing women's sports and women's sports competition so when i got to i would say seventy nine for example they had just merged the women's programs under one umbrella with the men and so we were all one family and so it was the it was a great era of the old big eight conference and i worked two and a half years there and then got a chance to come to the university of texas for the first time in the fall of one thousand nine hundred one and they had a very dynamic woman running the women's at buttocks department here named do publicist for women's side work several years there and got another big break i never you know i love the campus so much i love campus setting but you know campuses and institutions belong to conferences and so back then texas was in the southwest conference and i got an offer to work at a very unique conference in the east it was the original big east conference conference office located in providence rhode island and so the schools that i serve is a managerial although you spend a lot of time on your better schools campuses but it truly taught me the power of collaboration between schools and only and what the managers of the conferences do  and after seven years there though i miss that campus feel and to see it kids and coaches every day in texas called me back and so i've been back here since one nine hundred ninety three wow when testing so let's go into  sign it is very unique i knew who are all campbell was and some of the greats sort of the hidden secret pre media days for all of our sports was really the academic reputation of the  university of texas it is the flagship school of the state of texas and so we have a huge moment it's a large we have about fifty two thousand students here over forty thousand and are grads and you know great graduate programs in law business engineering etc but our twenty sports we have eleven women's sports and nine men's a lot of people pay attention to the typical sports of football where we won three national championships but we have been long excellent across the board we have what we call a broad based program we have five hundred student athletes about half and half men and women who compete in those sports and in the new big twelve conference which i say new because we have ten members of the big twelve are the big ten has fourteen members so you know math doesn't work anymore but the business of what we do you really and i my mother i think still thinks i just go to games but i define our jobs in athletics this way we're giving a collegiate experience to five hundred young people who are other people's children they're here doing the same thing that any undergraduate student would do they're figuring out the next arc of their life they are studying at a world class institution they're going to a very competitive academic school but they also have a gift and a love for the sport that they pursue and whether you're a volleyball player a baseball player a football player a basketball player a tennis player or golfer here you're serious about that and we have four hundred plus employees in texas athletics to combine to give that young person a great experience some of them coach some of them are assistant coaches some are athletic directors like my parent are men's a b n myself but we have huge units of support and sports medicine and health care academic services who help our students find their major and learn how to study in college and succeed in college prepare them for in turn ships and other things that lead down to a full time job we have a huge marketing division a huge publicity division huge events and facilities because we have a two hundred  budget for our sports programs and that's large like ohio state like penn state like michigan we're responsible for raising every penny of that so we also have large marketing and fundraising staffs again every penny that we raise goes against an experience for those five hundred young people so just like a faculty person here would tell you i don't have a job if i'm not teaching students we feel that we wouldn't have the opportunity to do what we do in our various roles if we weren't serving the student organization that's called an exemplary operation in our campus and there are others but exemplary means you have to raise your own revenue so when i came back to texas in ninety three after my stint at the big east  or job was over those external marketing areas but it was also to work with our selling arm which is a vendor it's now back in those days it was host communications which was acquired by i'm g but we have a sales staff here i am g m ploys who represent us in our sales area for sponsorships promotions use of our mark anything that would generate revenue that again we put right back up against the experience that we give our kids our trademark and icing is a separate unit within that area of revenue generation so we have a several individuals on our staff who are trademark icing experts and the royalties that are generate use of that mark meaning you know when you go buy a t shirt or a hat with that vaunted longhorn silhouette logo that everybody knows about that is generating royalties for the university of texas and we steward that program for not only  and but all of our u t schools you tap u t s a we work with all of our u t institutions and then the third area of revenue generation has to do with fundraising and frankly  everybody in our department is responsible for working with our fundraising staff to represent ourselves to the donors who like every school in the country regardless of division one two and three in the n c a a they're reaching in their pockets and they're buying tickets or they're sending donations and a tax deductible double to support the university it just so happens is when they send it here you can support the college of education or the college of engineering but in athletics we were like these units on campus and we fundraise we just completed a record setting year in two thousand and sixteen seventeen for fundraising year in terms of generation of not only donations but pledge and so it's a very good time to be in that area at the university of texas but our whole campus is fundraiser state supported schools actually in general a lot of private support because we're only getting probably about ten percent of our academic budget from tax hours so everybody on campus in some way if you work for an academic unit you're also a fan raiser and now how about because a lot of parents always talk about the wish and the tuitions is big at the college level what those the university of texas  to you know help those families out there's a lot of financial aid available and i'll speak to it from athletics standpoint other than the g i bill athletic scholarships in this country have been responsible for providing the pap and access to higher education for more young people other than the g i bill so when you think about the opportunities if you are a deserving student athlete and scholarship worthy you're offsetting what would be your again expenses to attend college they would change the rules in the autonomy five group where we actually have added cost of attendance at our place it happens to be a little over forty two hundred  forty three hundred dollars we can now apply the cost of attendance on top of a full scholarship for our students our other students undergraduate and graduate otherwise again they can apply for competitive scholarships and financial aid but first state school that is ranked as highly as texas is and multi levels of academia we still have a very reasonable in state and have a state tuition  equation but again it's very competitive i will tell you it texas we just submitted our largest freshman class ever eighty four hundred students this fall i think there were over eighty thousand applications for those slots so we remind our student athletes that this is a very coveted opportunity that you're partaking of to be a student athlete on our campus because hundreds if not thousands of freshman when train spots with our incoming freshman at temple chance to go to school at this great university in a beautiful place like austin texas now know a lot of students they they always think about the big sports like football and basketball but for women's sports what happens with the non revenue sports to do a lot of the students still get scholarships or money those sports as well we are fully funded fully scholarship and always have been as i told you in the early eighties the dynamic leadership of donald was our first full eighty we had during the time that i first came to austin in the eighty's we had eight sports and we were fully operational i mean donna was already selling season tickets and basketball and volleyball had a full time fundraiser and full time marketer you transfer that today more than almost forty years later it's that way for all of our sports out and tell you we don't use the term non revenue sports here we we do say olympic sports  but every sport has a chance to create revenue be it through ticket sales for attendance purposes fundraising but also there's another way where you can create again the backstop against the expenses for each sport and that is through fundraising we believe that men swimming for example here men swimming is one of thirteen national titles women's swimming is one nine hundred ninety is a sport that we always will want to have here even though it's been reduced across the board across the country but we have we produced the libyans at national quality national team qualifiers out of our programs and diving as well so the united states olympic committee for example  has has great interest in collaborating with schools like ourselves like stanford like florida like u s c who produce a limpy and in the sports where how does an almost serve as a training ground and if you look at our mental scenario i think eighty two percent of the u s medalists in sports had a college sports experience nexus at some point so our revenue generation can be through underwriting scholarships donation struan balance we want to end our operating funds and some of these olympic sports to make sure that they will always stay alive because it's important not only comes on your hands so how does that all work we have a large advance facilities in operations every sport here fortunately has an operations director and they help the coaches and the students with travel with it logistics our scheduling again when you're in a good conference like the big twelve if a function of your schedule will be the conference set schedule but again texas being texas we want to play teams in the non league portion of our schedules in all of our sports volleyball baseball trap and center on both coasts because we have five hundred thousand living alumni and they're all over the world not just in domestic united states and they are in the state of texas so  example we play football at u s c or women's basketball team played at connecticut last year u conn is returning that game this year track and field will have meets up in philly and penn relays are in des moines iowa at so baseball will have a series against stanford kind of cark sila softball team we have tournaments in arizona and california before the big twelve schedule so the function of our schedules are operational and you know sometimes it is a crossover that's the big difference between college and pro sports you know if you're in the senate tonio spurs organization you talk about the spurs and there are eighty two regular season games twenty four seven while this weekend for example we have a home football game our soccer teams that they are our volleyball team as an away a match wednesday and saturday we have fall ball for baseball and softball going on our cross country team will be in a big twelve championship a week from today that we're actually hosting out on a course a little north of austin so and bask most around the corner they start official practice today so everything goes on in colleges and so the longhorns roll themselves out if you well and twenty different brands color twenty different sports so no academics that's a big thing with parents these days as well they they talk about schools like university of texas and all the big schools it's all about the sport it's never about academics what what's your take on that it's reverse here there are students first and athletes second and what we want to be after a four or five year experience here is a productive citizen ready to go on and do whatever they need to do to take care of selves their partner or spouse or family and to succeed and so we believe in the personal leadership development that is sort of the third part of the triangle student athlete and developing leaders and so all of our staff members here have some part and parcel of helping that young person progress but under n c a a rules today you can't compete sure making excel aerated progress it's not reasonable progress and more it's actually accelerated progress toward your degree for example do they are academic rules put in about fourteen years ago you have to have forty percent of your degree countable credits by your fifths of master and then in a declared major for you to continue to be eligible and compete so it's not the service not a place like texas where you get again eight thousand hope they're both comparable because that means that level of excellence is being reached for every day now do you get involved with anything with all the different sports on recruiting or the sport takes care of that again for visits for example on a football weekend every sport is for kerning and i will not only meet with prospects but also their parents and their family members two weeks ago we had a young person that this is about here including from leadership frankly not much has changed my speech about texas since the eighty's when i got here i can promise their parents they are going to be in a place that values excellen e we want people that know how to be good teammates and good role players on the team we want to be serious students because that's required here and we have great academic and study hall learning structures around them we're going to deliver the best and services to take care of them from nutritionists to sports science to sports performance to health care delivers an athletic trainers but we also are going to prepare there to have a successful life and a successful besides a student athlete part we will not have completed our job and i want parents and and family members to hear those stories as well in addition to our recurrence well give us a little sense of what the school is like what's the atmosphere at the university of texas in austin well today's about seventy seven degrees in atlanta sky so first of all it's one of the most beautiful areas in this great state of texas which as you know has a population i think approaching twenty seven million and if it's not already there austin which was about three hundred twenty thousand people when i was first hired here in one thousand nine hundred one i can put a one million in front of that i were well over a million to now it's a big growing city very clean city high tech oriented  so the university is metropolitan it's located downtown right next to we can see our capitol building from our walls it's one of the most transformative places in the world it's again it's highly energetic it's a great young person's town and it's really a place that the university and the city reside cohesively and there's great energy and there's nothing like out an athletic event or a graduation to bring people together and we do a lot of those here at the university of texas fantastic well chris way it would come in at the end of our show and usually i asked my guests what advice you want to give to the families out there that their sons and daughters are interested in going to university of texas  what advice would you like to give them well again and it's a wonderful place and i would say set your goals high and do your do your work or only i'm an old basketball player so you know when you're playing defense or play in a position your coaches tell you do your work early don't wait to the last minute to get position so if you're an eighth eighth grader moving into high school where your course credits begin to count start start thinking man because it again a school like texas very demanding it wants the best and the brightest so do your work early i would tell them that if i get they are athletic and they aspire to be a student athlete again start your work early communicate well let people know that you aspired to be a scholarship student athlete and get your communication patterns in line but this like many other colleges across the land are truly places that give young people an opportunity to be great and have it here is university of texas will take great young people and make them even greater we have great faculty great employees and a marvelous setting here too i love them to realize their dreams great