Jeffrey Graham Delivers his Doctoral Dissertation on the Relationship Between High Risk Drinking and Cohesion Among College Athletes

Jeffrey Graham, Frostburg State University’s vice president of student affairs, delivered his doctoral dissertation Friday, Feb. 13. After three years in his doctoral program, it is time for him to stand in front of his colleagues and present his 90-minute, final research study of his educational leadership program.

“My topic is The Relationship between High Risk Drinking and Teen Cohesion Among College Athletes,” he said.

Graham was comfortable with this subject because he already learned a lot about it from his previous presentations with college athletics being one of his main areas of focus. Previous studies determined that alcohol and drugs affect an athlete’s accelerated movement, hydration, etc. It was found through athletic programs that students tend to drink more alcohol. It was also found that teams which are homogeneous seem to be more cohesive and drink more.

“I actually enjoyed writing my dissertation more than I enjoyed the course work,” he explained.

One of Graham’s strong points is being an achiever. An achiever is one whom accomplishes big task, which is what he really likes to do because one has to prove that the research is valid. His most challenging task was learning how to do the research statistics.

His intended audience for his dissertation is athletic departments, coaches, and people within the student affairs office. Graham relates athletic teams to the nature of fraternities and sororities.

“Athletes become more cohesive the more time they spend with each other through social and team related functions,” he said.

Most teams would want to be more cohesive because those teams are more likely to have success. The downside of this cohesiveness is that those teams drink a lot more. Research indicates that cohesive athletic teams don’t drink as much frequently but more quantity whenever they do. This makes them likely to experience more harms such as fights, citations, and sexual assault. Graham feels that this knowledge should be promoted and there should be more social events without alcohol, such as bowling, to counter the downside of cohesiveness. Team captains should be leaders all around and not just on the field. There should be no more than two teammates in each house because studies prove that smaller apartment units have less parties.

Graham is also apart of the President’s alcohol task force and manages the university’s off-campus conduct system. In the next 5-10 years Graham hopes for a 10 percent employer increase in the Student Affairs Department to recruit students each year. Frostburg’s geographical location is a challenge when trying to recruit students so they need employers who will be innovative in order to attract them here.

He also speaks on the new plan that President Obama has proposed: free community college, and how that will affect FSU because then many students would be transferring. Colleges prefer to have students beginning from their freshman year because it is economically better for the institution, whereas transfers would have a slight fiscal impact. He believes colleges should be prepared for this to be able to deal with these economic changes properly.

“I think that Student Affairs [department] is important because we are social animals,” he said. Connecting with social and academic life is important for students because it is what they will take with them when they graduate and leave the university. This job is left up to the Student Affairs department. “I do a lot of work with community officials to make sure that student living environments are as good as students’ learning environments,” he said.

Graham mentions many of these better living environments in his dissertation as he discusses different rules for athletic teams off the field. He presented at 3:00 p.m. Feb. 13.