The office is only paces from the front entrance to Welsh-Ryan Arena, nestled between a softball diamond and a football field, and just a Hail Mary from a weight room.

It’s in the shadow of Northwestern’s athletic facilities, and what they do here will never be debated at a bar or broadcast on ESPN.

But the Academic Services office in Anderson Hall helped produce the most important statistic NU athletics will see this year: a 92 percent athlete graduation rate.

According to an NCAA report released in November, that number places NU at the top of a list of 321 Division I schools.

The report examined graduation rates for freshmen receiving athletics aid who entered school from 1990-91 to 1993-94.

While the average Division I school graduated 58 percent of its athletes within six years, NU graduated 92 percent on a four-year track – a percentage point higher than the school’s total student graduation rate for that time.

NCAA rules require that all schools offer some type of academic support for their athletes, though the central governing body does not specify what kind or how much.

For some schools, “support” seems to mean a few bucks for books and a pat on the back; for others, it means holding the athlete’s hand.

NU’s Academic Services program falls at the more involved end of the spectrum.

“We’re like a student affairs office in the athletic department,” said Margaret Akerstrom, assistant athletic director for Academic Services and an Education lecturer.

Academic Services offers a vast array of resources, assisting athletes with everything from registration to r