Performance in Motion, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 1996

Message from the Chair

PIM is on the Web! Starting with this issue, you can read our newsletter on our homepage: http//www.ed-web3.educ.msu.edu. We thank and welcome Tom Smith as the new editor of PIM for suggesting this idea and other ideas for the newsletter. Mentor Society members will continue to receive a printed version of the newsletter through regular mail. Alumni and friends can become Mentor Society members by making a contribution to the Mentor Society. Instructions are provided at the end of this newsletter.

The 1995-96 academic year culminated with the graduation of 74 students with B.S. degrees, 22 students with M.S. degrees, and 2 students with Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Physical Education and Exercise Science. We are very proud of our graduates and all of their accomplishments. We had seven undergraduates graduate magna cum laude (with high honor, i.e., grade point averages of 3.7 or higher), with Jamie Anderson carrying a 3.88, the highest overall GPA in the department. We also had seven students who graduated cum laude, or with honor. The graduates are listed on page 6.

As some students graduated others continue to enroll. Our student enrollment, especially at the undergraduate level, continues to climb. We now have 404 undergraduate majors with 231 at the junior and senior level. Women comprise 59% and minority students comprise 16% of our undergraduate majors. Approximately 85% of our majors are in the nonteaching track and are interested in clinical/corporate applications or graduate school. The other 15% are in the teacher certification program. We have 34 students who are currently in the teacher certification program including 8 fifth year students who have been placed in schools for their year-long teaching internship. In our graduate program,we are maintaining the increase we gained last year. We currently have 117 M.S. candidates and 45 Ph.D. candidates. Forty-six percent of our M.S. and 42% our Ph.D. candidates are women and 11% at the M.S. and 20% at the Ph.D. level are minority students.

Congratulations are in order for two of our alumni, Dr. Beverly Ulrich (#375) and Dr. David Lamb (#369), who were recently inducted as new fellows in the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education. Dr. Beverly Ulrich is an associate professor at Indiana University where she studies the acquisition of motor skills in infants and young children. She received her Ph.D. from MSU under the direction of Dr. Vern Seefeldt. Dr. David Lamb is a professor at Ohio State University where he researches the affects of energy metabolism and fluid replacement on exercise performance. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from MSU under the direction of Dr. Wayne Van Huss.

The Academy is an honorary organization composed of individuals who have made significant contributions to the fields of kinesiology and physical education. Membership is limited to 150 active fellows. To be inducted into the Academy, an individual must demonstrate significant contributions to the scholarly and professional literature over a period of at least 10 years and demonstrate significant contributions of leadership to the profession. When a fellow is inducted, he or she is assigned a number in successive order from the first original member—Clark Hetherington (#1). In addition to Bev and David, we have six other alums who are Academy fellows: Perry Johnson (#211), Richard Nelson (#225), Dee Edington (#275), Dale Hanson (#278), Mickael Maksud (#318), and Maureen Weiss (#360). A number of past and present faculty members of the department are also members of the Academy: Arthur Steinhaus (#29), Henry Montoye (#148), King McCristal (#152), Wayne Van Huss (#191), William Heusner (#210), Robert Singer (#251), Vern Seefeldt (#280), Robert Malina (#287), Deborah Feltz (#340), and Daniel Gould (#362).

Having alumni who are successful in their careers starts with giving our students the best preparation that we can. Toward this end, we are embarking on an assesment of our undergraduate and graduate programs. This initiative is a result of the strategic planning process that we started in 1994. Our program assessment will include surveys of alumni and currently enrolled students as well as focus group interviews of employers. With feedback from alumni, students and employers, we will be able to make the necessary adjustments in our programs to help our students meet the challenges of a continually changing job market.

We have also continued with quality improvements in the area of technology. As I mentioned in the last issue of PIM, we will be creating a mini-computer and resource lab in I.M. Sports-Circle with the help of the University’s technology fund. We have purchased six Macintoshs which will be installed during the spring 1997 semester. We will ask for six more computers in our next request for fiscal year 1997-98. We are also asking for ethernet ports to be installed in two of our classrooms to allow instructors to utilize the internet in their teaching. In addition to our departmental efforts to improve the use of technology for students and faculty, President McPherson has issued The MSU Technology Guarantee. The guarantee is as follows:

1. MSU students will have an intensive, quality-based technological experience during their undergraduate years, from admission to graduation.
2. MSU alumni will have affordable lifelong technological access and two post-graduate years of free e-mail access.
3. MSU will double hours of interactive instruction by fall 1998.
4. MSU will build upon an Extension tradition in every Michigan county to technologically expand knowledge, expertise, and formats from all 14 colleges by the year 2000.
5. MSU will aggressively pursue technological partnerships across disciplines for quality education, economic development, and citizenship.
6. MSU will, through technology, be a worldclass producer and disseminator of global knowledge.

The University is encouraging faculty to introduce internet technology in their teaching in conjunction with the technology guarantee and also has some money available to support faculty work in this area. For more information about The MSU Technology Guarantee contact: Robert Church, Vice Provost for University Outreach at (517) 355-8727; e-mail: rchurch@pilot.msu.edu or Paul Hung, Vice Provost for Computing and Technology at (517) 353-0722; email: pmhunt@pilot.msu.edu.

Finally, we are excited about our upcoming centennial year in 1999. Thanks to work by one of my former doctoral students, Brenda Riemer, we discovered that the department of Physical Culture and Athletics was founded in 1899. Dr. Riemer presented an historical overview of physical education at MSU in the first three issues of PIM. We are just beginning plans for a year-long celebration of our first 100 years. We welcome any ideas you may have.