Professor Catherine “Cathi” VandeVoort has long embraced UC Davis as a place where “our student-athletes are students first.”

She served as a member of the Athletics Administrative Advisory Committee for more than 10 years and helped guide the campus’s transition to full Division I status in the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Now she has taken on an even bigger role, as the faculty athletics representative, having been appointed by Chancellor Linda Katehi to a three-year term that began July 1.

Under NCAA rules, each member school must have a faculty athletics representative. At UC Davis, the representative’s responsibilities include certifying students’ eligibility for competition, practice and financial aid; and reporting to the Academic Senate on student-athletes’ academic performance.

Additionally, the UC Davis faculty athletics representative serves as the university’s delegate to the Big West Conference, as well as NCAA conventions and special meetings.

VandeVoort maintains her seat on the Athletics Administrative Advisory Committee, a panel that the chancellor formulates anew each year. The panel comprises 16 voting members: nine senate or federation members (including the faculty athletics representative), one staff member, one alumnus and five students (including at least three non-athletes).

VandeVoort is a former longtime leader of the Academic Federation; during those years, she was an adjunct professor. Two years ago, she became a member of the Academic Senate, having been appointed a professor in residence in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, in the School of Medicine.

She works primarily at the California National Primate Research Center, mostly doing research in reproductive biology.

Professor Kim Elsbach, who holds the Stephen G. Newberry Endowed Chair in Leadership in the Graduate School of Management, served as faculty athletics representative for five years before VandeVoort.

“I’ve got some really big shoes to fill,” VandeVoort said, adding that Elsbach did “an exceptional job during a difficult time.”

The national Faculty Athletics Representatives Association puts out a handbook that describes the duties of the position. The handbook says, in part: “Faculty athletics representatives provide oversight and advise in the administration of an institutional athletics program, (and) should be involved in the assurance of the academic integrity of the athletics program and in the maintenance of the welfare of the student-athlete.”

VandeVoort described “the Davis way” of athletics — calling it successful yet underappreciated on campus.

“Our admissions standards for athletes are exactly the same as they are for the rest of the student body,” she said.

And, among our student-athletes, she said, there are many, many academic success stories — stories that need to be better told in our own campus community.

Take the Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholars awards, for example. As announced this week by the publication Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, nine Aggies earned Ashe honors — with five Aggies named to the first team, two of them for the third year in a row. Read the Intercollegiate Athletics news release.

The awards are named after the late tennis player, an African American, NCAA singles champion at UCLA, and Wimbledon, U.S. Open and Australian Open champion. Eligibility rules to be an Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar include the following: a student-athlete must self-identify as a student of color, hold a cumulative grade-point average of 3.2 or higher, and demonstrate a record of service to the campus and-or community.

VandeVoort said she also seeks to raise awareness of Davis’ unique teacher-coach philosophy, whereby coaches teach lecture courses and general interest physical education classes.

“This promotes a unique interaction between the general student body and athletics that isn’t found on other campuses,” VandeVoort said.

“Name one other place where you can take a PE class with a Division I coach” — such as racquetball and table tennis classes with football coach Bob Biggs, or badminton classes with men’s basketball coach Gary Stewart.

Another example: men’s water polo coach Steve Doten leads an activity class in water polo, and teaches P.E. 300, for elementary school teachers.

VandeVoort said she aims to see “the Davis way” continue, and this has been the motivation behind her service to athletics, first on the administration advisory committee and now as the faculty athletics representative.

“For me the real challenge is how to educate the faculty and staff about the really good things that Intercollegiate Athletics is doing.”