MBB HOKIES 17-18 | MEDIA GUIDE

Q & A WI TH ALISE SVIHLA ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, STUDENT-ATHLETE ACADEMIC SUPPORT SERVICES Q: What brought you back to Virginia Tech? AS: I have wanted to be back at Virginia Tech since the day that I graduated. Blacksburg is a special place, and I’ve always been waiting for the right opportunity to get back home. Q: Walk us through what is a typical day for you while working with the men’s and women’s basketball programs, along with the other programs with which you work AS: A typical day starts at 8 a.m. with study hall, so I try and get there around 7:15 a.m. to prepare for that morning’s study hall. The guys come in for about two hours, sometimes a little bit more. There is a lot of one-on-one with them. There is a lot of organization, study skills … things like that. I make sure that everyone is prepared for the day. Throughout the day, they will come in and have individual, one-on-one meetings with me. We will go through all their grades, their assignments they have coming up and any additional work they might need that night, including tutoring. Q: How do you go about scheduling classes that best suit the needs of the individual student-athlete? AS: Our No. 1 goal is always graduation. We want to push them as far as we can to get them as close to graduation as they possibly can get. They will meet with their academic advisor on campus to make sure that they understand the requirements they need to do for their major. Then they will come and see me, and I’ll help them pick out times for those classes and make sure, once again, that they are on track toward graduation. Q: What are the biggest challenges you face in working with the student-athletes on a day-to-day basis? AS: Travel is always a challenge. We are always looking ahead to be as proactive as we possibly can. We motivate these guys to get as much work done in advance as possible before they go on the road and before they have a game, so they can concentrate on basketball when it comes time for that. Q: How much do you work with the people on campus to make sure that the academic needs of our student-athletes are maintained? AS: The people on campus—the professors, staff members, everyone on campus—are really a huge part of what we do. We need the professors to understand that the student-athletes are traveling, or we might need a professor to work with us to give an exam early, or whatever it might be. We just really encourage our student-athletes to have those relationships with their professors. The professors are the No. 1 resource. They are more important than our tutors, or whatever it is that we have in our facility. You want to make sure that you get outside that “athletics bubble” and get to know the people on campus, too. #getB3 TTER #ThisIsHome 99