Atlantic 10 Release
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The Atlantic 10 Conference announced Thursday the 14 winners of the A-10 Postgraduate Scholarship awards for 2019. The prestigious honor is given to a graduating student-athlete from each of the league's 14 members. For Fordham, women's swimming student-athlete
Amie Ko (Edison, N.J./Edison) is this year's recipient.
Ko, a Public Accountancy major and four-year A-10 Commissioner's Honor Roll member, capped her four-year career by placing 16th in the 400 IM and 22nd in the 200 IM at the 2019 Atlantic 10 Championships while also competing in the 200 breaststroke. She competed in all three events at each of the past three Atlantic 10 Championships.
Ko is active in service projects, participating in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk for the past four years in Central Park and participating in the team's annual Fundraiser/Treadathon for the International Water Safety Foundation, which helps teach kids to swim in Cambodia, for the past two years. She also volunteered in the "Saturday's in Motion" program in Basking Ridge, N.J., teaching children with autism how to swim.
Over the last six years, the A-10's Postgraduate Scholarship program has awarded $420,000 to 80 former student-athletes. Each of the 14 honorees receives $5,000 to contribute towards full-time enrollment in a postgraduate or professional program. Instituted to provide continuing education opportunities for graduating student-athletes, the program annually awards $70,000 in scholarship funding to former A-10 student-athletes. This marks the fifth straight year the Atlantic 10 has provided the scholarships to 14 individuals.
"I want to congratulate this exceptional group of Postgraduate Scholarship recipients," stated Atlantic 10 Commissioner Bernadette V. McGlade. "Each of these young women and men have demonstrated a talent for academics and leadership throughout their successful careers as student-athletes. We are proud to award them one of the Atlantic 10's most prestigious honors to assist with their postgraduate education."
The class is comprised of 12 female and two male student-athletes, representing seven different sports with an average GPA of 3.744. The process involves the league's athletic directors, senior woman administrators and faculty athletic representatives.
In each of the last five years, the average GPA of the honorees for the Postgraduate Scholarship Program has been 3.70 or higher. The program, which began honoring two student-athletes in 1991, has been so successful and well-received by both the recipients and the A-10 member institutions that it has expanded several times. The most recent expansion, which was adopted in January of 2015 and implemented that spring, now includes one representative from each A-10 school.
To be considered for the Postgraduate Scholarship, student-athletes must have performed with distinction both in the classroom and in their respective sports throughout their career, while demonstrating exemplary conduct in the community. The postgraduate program expanded to four recipients in 1997 and then grew to 10 in 2014.
The Postgraduate Scholarship Program is part of the conference's broad-based commitment to student-athlete opportunities and academics. The conference consistently ranks at the top amongst all Division I Conferences in both Graduation Success Rate (GSR) and the Academic Progress Rate (APR) data released by the NCAA.
