KNOXVILLE – Dr. Ruth Darling, director of the University of Tennessee Thornton Athletics Student Life Center, has been named president of the National Academic Advising Association.
Darling, who also is associate provost of academic affairs at UT, will assume the association’s presidency in October at the organization’s annual meeting in Dallas. She will serve a one-year term.
UT Provost Loren Crabtree said Darling’s election underscores her leadership role in advising and the work she has done at the Thornton Center.
“This is deserved recognition for Ruth,” Crabtree said. “Before she went to the Thornton Center, she developed the advising center in our largest college, arts and sciences, into a model program for our other academic units.
“The Thornton Center has become a national model for other major universities like ours. It is a wonderful facility, but what Ruth and her staff are doing within the walls of the building is the reason people are looking to Tennessee for guidance.”
The center has responsibility for all academic support services offered to UT student-athletes. Darling has been its director since the center opened two years ago.
NACADA, founded in 1979, promotes quality advising services and professional development for its 6,700 members. As president, Darling will be the association’s chief executive officer and will chair its board of directors.
Darling holds the doctorate in education and the master of science in educational psychology from UT, and a bachelor of music degree from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. She headed the arts and science advising center for 10 years.