She is the third generation of women in her family to earn their degrees from UT.

Sams, of Kingston, Tennessee, will get her bachelor’s degree in recreation and sport management with a concentration in therapeutic recreation. She graduates from the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences.

Sams’s grandmother, Betty M. “Bay” Walker, graduated in 1953 with a master’s degree in family relations and child development and went on to work at three colleges, retiring from McNeese State University.

Sams’s mother, Beth Walker Sams, earned her bachelor’s degree in fashion merchandising in 1983. She now works as the sheriff’s assistant in Roane County.

Beth Walker Sams said family had a huge influence on her decision to attend UT thirty years ago.

Not only was her mother an alumna, her father attended UT, but he was drafted into the military before he could finish. Her uncle is also a UT grad.

“All three of my brothers chose to attend UT,” she said. “As the younger sister, I spent many years following my brothers in their many endeavors.

“Although there were several factors that went into my decision to attend UT, such as quality of education and location, it was an easy decision to follow my siblings.”

She remembers feeling anxious as she stood in in line to register for her first semester of classes.

“Being a very young freshman, I wondered if I would ever be able to make it through the next four years. As I stood in line, my brother Patrick walked by and laughed at me. Suddenly, I felt like everything would be OK because my brothers were here.”

For current grad Andrea Sams, UT was a perfect fit—near family, but ripe with opportunities for her to explore her own interests.

“I wanted to stay close to home, and I loved sports so I couldn’t wait to go to football games,” she said. “I loved being at the football games so much that I joined The Pride of the Southland Marching Band color guard for two years.”

Sams also spent three years working with children with disabilities at Camp Koinonia, a weeklong camp hosted by UT’s Therapeutic Recreation Program. And, since she was close enough to commute home, she continued to work as a child care provider at her church.

This semester she did a semester-long internship with Anderson County Schools.

At its recent awards celebration, the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sports Studies presented Sams with the Samuel A. Venable Award for her commitment to the university and the profession through service.

“I’ve loved being active, and I’ve developed a real passion for children with special needs,” said Sams, who is considering graduate school.

While Sams is graduating, the family tradition will continue next year.

“My little sister will be coming to UT in the fall as a freshman,” Andrea Sams said.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

Coe is an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies. View the story here.

A new study by a team of UT researchers has identified specific ways—and estimated minutes for each approach—that can help children achieve the recommended daily physical activity goal.

The results of various approaches, ranging from mandatory physical education in school to changes in playground designs, were published recently in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The study was funded through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Active Living Research program.

“Schools and communities at large can play a major role in helping youngsters stay active and be healthy,” said David Bassett, a professor in the UT Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies and the study’s lead author. “This information can help legislators, school officials, and other policy makers make well-informed decisions that can enhance physical activity in youth.”

For the study, Bassett and his team reviewed more than eighty-five past research studies that assessed physical activity in children—such as walking or biking to school, increasing physical education time in school, or having access to parks—using accelerometers, pedometers, heart rate monitors, or direct observation. He and colleagues converted the results from each study into a standard measurement of how energy is expended. They then averaged the results to estimate the minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity for children.

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, issued by the federal government in 2008, recommend that children and adolescents be active for at least sixty minutes every day. The UT study offers these suggestions on how children can perform or combine a variety of physical activities to meet that goal:

• Mandatory daily physical education in school: twenty-three minutes
• Providing classroom physical activity breaks: nineteen minutes
• Walking or biking to school: sixteen minutes
• Renovating parks to include more equipment and opportunities for activity: twelve minutes
• After-school physical activity programs: ten minutes
• Modifying school playgrounds: six minutes
• Standardizing physical education curriculum to increase active time and decrease inactive time: six minutes more than traditional physical education class
• Modifying recess to provide more play equipment that encourages physical activity: five minutes more than traditional recess

To learn more about the study, visit the Active Living Research website.

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CONTACT:

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lola.alapo@tennessee.edu)

Wilson, who teaches a class that deals with cultural ideologies and social issues, will supplement assigned readings with online videos and presentations and incorporate some online assignments. This way, Wilson can spend less time lecturing and more time helping his students apply the concepts to the real world.

GTA@OIT grants are awarded twice annually to graduate teaching assistants or associates who have sole responsibility for teaching a class and want to enhance their teaching using Online@UT tools. To apply, interested individuals must submit a proposal about how they would redesign their class. Winners receive $1,000 for travel or other purposes and work with an IT graduate student assistant mentor to implement their redesign ideas.

Brian Rider, a graduate assistant at the UT Center for Physical Activity and Health, noted that people who try to do too much too soon typically get injured or discouraged.

“Whatever your fitness goal, start slow,” Rider said. “You want to develop new fitness habits for a lifetime, not just for January.”

Rider offers these tips for maintaining fitness goals in the new year and beyond:

• Establish short-term goals first. Achieving short-term goals helps provide the continued confidence to work toward those long-term goals.
• Don’t get discouraged. There will always be setbacks. Recognize obstacles and work to avoid them. If you’re not a morning person, schedule workouts for lunch or later in the day. Find exercises and activities you enjoy and focus on those.
• Put your goals in writing and make them specific and measurable. Goals are tougher to ignore when they’re in writing and placed where you see them daily.
• Don’t wait until Monday. Too often, when people miss a workout or fall off their diet, they decide to wait until the start of the next week to get back on the wagon. That just allows for more days to fall behind. Start back up immediately and keep momentum moving forward.
• Find a workout buddy. Often it’s easier to work out with a friend who can offer motivation—and accountability.
• Don’t assume you need to set aside an hour or join a gym. The 2008 national physical activity guidelines recommend 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week. That can be accomplished in segments of as little as ten minutes of physical activity at a time throughout the course of the week. For those targeting weight loss as a goal, additional minutes are needed.

The UT Center for Physical Activity and Health is dedicated to helping individuals enhance their health, fitness, and quality of life. For more information about the center, visit the center’s website or e-mail cpah@utk.edu.

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CONTACT:

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)

The study is among the first to examine how academic achievement relates to all aspects of physical fitness including endurance, muscular strength, flexibility, and body fat.

It appears in this month’s issue of the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness.

“Not only does improving fitness have physical health implications for the child, it also has implications for their academic achievement,” said Dawn Coe, assistant professor in the UT Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies, and the lead researcher on the study.

“We know a lot of schools are cutting out physical education classes and physical activity opportunities throughout the day. Some of my previous research showed that if kids have one hour of physical education during the day instead of an academic class, they did not show a decrease in academic achievement compared with students who received an extra hour of academic instruction per day. By being active, they could potentially raise their grades.”

Coe, who conducted the study while a doctoral student at Michigan State University, examined 312 sixth- through eighth-graders from a single public school in western Michigan. She conducted a series of assessments on the students including shuttle runs, curl-ups, and push-ups. She then measured the children’s academic achievement in four core classes over the course of one school year as well as their performance on a standardized test.

She found that the students with the highest fitness levels performed better on the standardized exam and earned better grades.

“Youth who are engaged in a physically active lifestyle reap benefits not only in their physical health but also in other aspects of their well-being, such as mental health and academic performance,” the report states.

Click here to learn more about the study.

To obtain a copy of the study, e-mail lalapo@utk.edu or dcoe@utk.edu.

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CONTACT:

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)

Fritz Polite, top left, poses with retired South Korean athletes participating in the NEST program.

Nineteen elite South Korean athletes—from Olympic gold medalists to world champions—will spend the next few months at UT learning skills to become coaches and international sports ambassadors.

The retired athletes also will improve their English language, learn sports marketing, pick up coaching techniques, and work in their area of athletic expertise as part of the Next Generation Sports Talent (NEST) program.

In its fifth year, NEST is designed to equip participants with tools necessary for an athletic-related career. It is sponsored by the South Korean government in partnership with the UT College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences; the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA); the English Language Institute; and national and international sports governing bodies.

The athletes are paired with UT students who serve as their peer mentors. This part of the program is especially meaningful because it gives NEST students the opportunity to make new friends who will help them assimilate, said current NEST student Jeongho Hong. Hong, 38, won Olympic gold, silver, and bronze medals in handball at the 1992 Barcelona games, 1996 Atlanta games and 2008 Beijing games, respectively.

“Maybe we can teach each other our country’s culture, customs, and languages,” said Hong, who retired last year after playing professionally in Japan, Denmark, and Norway. “It’s important because there’s so much about each other we don’t know.”

UT competed against five other US institutions to house this program.

“As we continue to educate, develop, and prepare our students for a changing global economy, the NEST-UT partnership allows both parties to explore and share cultures,” said NEST director Fritz Polite. “It is a one-of-a-kind program and is extremely beneficial for both countries.”

Based on feedback from previous NEST students, officials this year are expanding the program from four to seven months. Instead of leaving in December, students will now stay through March 2013.

“They agreed that they enjoyed the experience so much but they felt it was too short,” Polite said. “We want to do a little bit more along the lines of cultural exchange with other (American) students.”

Extending the time also would give NEST students exposure to more sports. Previously, students could participate only in the UT football season. Now, they’ll experience basketball, track, and soccer.

“Working with the other teams gives them a fuller experience,” Polite said.

NEST for the first time has a graduate advisor, a previous NEST student named Kyun Suk Kim who will serve as a mentor to the students.

Also new this year: Visiting assistant professor Seungyup Lim will research the impact of the NEST program and best practices that officials can use to further improve the initiative. Kim, who attended UT as a doctoral student before returning to South Korea to teach, also will look into the possibility of expanding the program.

For current NEST student Chunsa Byun, 24, the program is already producing results. Being at UT has fueled the desire to stay longer at the university and learn even more after the NEST program ends.

“I have no fear of something new,” said Byun, who set the world record in the 1000-meter speed-skating short track during the 2003 World Junior Championships.

Byun said her American counterparts have shown her that “Americans have a strong sense of pride. They’re very considerate of others.”

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CONTACT:

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)

The Early Learning Center playground, before renovations.

They also appear to use their imagination more, according to the report.

The study, which examined changes in physical activity levels and patterns in young children exposed to both traditional and natural playgrounds, is among the first of its kind in the United States, according to Dawn Coe, assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies.

“Natural playgrounds have been popping up around the country but there was nothing conclusive on if they work,” she said. “Now, we know.”

For the study, Coe observed children at UT’s Early Learning Center. She began in June 2011 by observing the children while the center still had traditional wood and plastic equipment. She logged how often they used the slides and other apparatus, studied the intensity of their activity, and how much time they spent in a porch area to get shade from the sun.

The Early Learning Center staff then began renovations of the playground and over several months added a gazebo and slides that were built into a hill. They planted dwarf trees, built a creek, and landscaped it with rocks and flowers. They also added logs and tree stumps. They turned it into what Coe called a “natural playscape.”

The Early Learning Center playground, after renovations.

Coe, working with Cary Springer, a statistician with the Office of Information Technology, returned for follow-up observations this year and found significant differences between usage of the traditional and natural playground.

The children more than doubled the time they spent playing, from jumping off the logs to watering the plants around the creek. They were engaging in more aerobic and bone- and muscle-strengthening activities.

“This utilized motor skills, too,” Coe said.

She also found that the children were less sedentary and used the porch area less after the renovation.

Coe is preparing a manuscript of the study to submit for publication.

“Natural playscapes appear to be a viable alternative to traditional playgrounds for school and community settings,” Coe said. “Future studies should look at these changes long-term as well as the nature of the children’s play.”

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CONTACT:

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lola.alapo@tennessee.edu)

Coe found that kids use their imaginations more in the natural setting to do activities. She added that natural playgrounds are more cost effective than traditional ones because the elements cost less and more students can use them at one time.

Thompson, who has written about walking for fitness for the American College of Sports Medicine, said almost anyone who walks for physical activity could increase his or her pace without getting specific coaching.

• WATE-TV: UT study may change appearance of playgrounds
• WBIR-TV: Natural playground inspires kids to be more active

Kim, 36, a retired competitive alpine skier, this fall studied at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, through the Next Generation Sports Talent (NEST) program, an initiative designed to prepare retired South Korean elite athletes to be coaches and international sports diplomats.

Sixteen people, from Asian Game champions to Olympic athletes, participated in the semester-long program and are wrapping up their time this week.

“We have to give back,” Kim said, noting that many of the athletes will likely work for various sports committees. He will seek an internship with the International Ski Federation, adding that he would like to help with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia as well. He eventually would like to join the Korean Olympic Committee.

NEST, in its fourth year, is sponsored by the South Korean government in partnership with the UT College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the English Language Institute, and national/international sports governing bodies.

UT Knoxville competed against five other US institutions to house this program. To date, about seventy athletes have gone through NEST.

This semester, the athletes improved their English language skills, learned sports marketing, picked up coaching techniques, and worked in their area of athletic expertise. They also were matched with UT students who served as their peer mentors.

“The overall objective is to develop future, global leaders,” NEST program director Fritz Polite said. “We want them to be part of the global concepts of sports, including governing bodies.”

For Eunhui “Tina” An, 23, her time at UT through NEST gave her a deeper desire to study more about how to use sports as an agent of peace in developing countries.

An, a judo champion who won a gold medal in the 2005 Hong Kong International Judo Game, said that through sports diplomacy in developing countries, “I can give them a vision of how we can live passionately and peacefully.”

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C O N T A C T :

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lola.alapo@tennessee.edu)

KNOXVILLE — When she was in the Navy, Melissa Watson was one of the first women trained to use hand-to-hand combat, if needed, during searches of foreign ships in a war zone.

Watson, 35, finished eight years of military service in 2007 and is now at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, working on her master’s degree in therapeutic recreation. She hopes to use her healing hands to work with injured soldiers and veterans.

Melissa Watson receives the Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist pin from her Commanding Officer on the USS Port Royal (CG 73). This pin signifies that she has extensive knowledge of her ship.

Watson began her Navy career as a seaman apprentice and advanced to first class petty officer. She was stationed at the Naval Air Station in Whidbey Island, Washington, a joint shore command with the Canadians. From there, she went to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, on the USS Port Royal.

While her primary job was being an information systems technician, her secondary job aboard the USS Port Royal was being one of the first female members of the Non-compliant Visit Board Search and Seizure team.

“We were deployed to the Persian Gulf to guard the oil terminals off the coast of Iran and Iraq,” she said. Her team would board all ships coming into the area to search them to make sure nothing was awry.

She and a female shipmate went through a three-week training to be part of the team. They were the first women Navy-wide to finish training and the first sent to a war zone to do actual ship boardings.

“We were trained in hand-to-hand combat and takedowns. We had weapons training and terrorist training by Army Rangers, Navy Seals, and Marine Recon personnel,” she said. “I was bruised up and down my body. It was very difficult and very rewarding all at the same time.”

Melissa Watson learning how to take down someone during Non-compliant Visit Board Search and Seizure school in Hawaii.

Watson said the search and seizure team would contact each ship coming into the area. The ships’ crews would let the team aboard and then stay out of the way as team members checked the manifest and did room-by-room inspections.

Although Watson and her teammates were trained to use force if anyone resisted the searches, they never had to use their combat skills.

“We had some hairy situations, but nothing where we had to use our skills. We were grateful for that,” she said.

“Going through the Non-compliant Visit Board Search and Seizure training and actually being able to do the boardings during the war was probably my most memorable moment in the service,” Watson said.

After being discharged from the Navy, Watson returned to UT to finish an undergraduate degree in psychology she’d started prior to enlisting. She graduated in May 2009. After taking a year off to work, she returned to UT for graduate school in August 2010 and will graduate in the spring.

“Being in the military made me want to come back to school and finish, to follow through with things,” she said.

Her military experience also led her down her current career path.

During an illness, she had to leave her ship and stay temporarily on a base in Kuwait. There, she met a lot of convalescing wounded soldiers.

Now in the course of her studies and volunteer work with the adaptive golf clinic sponsored by the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center, she’s gotten to know even more wounded veterans, young and old.

“I’m passionate about the military and want to work with the military again, only in a little different capacity,” she said.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

The same person can expend 127 calories while mopping and as much as 258 calories while fencing in a thirty-minute timeframe if the activities are done in a manual wheelchair.

This is according to a review article written by Professor David R. Bassett Jr. of the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. It calculates the calorie costs of various physical activities for people who use manual wheelchairs and summarizes them into a single source—a first of its kind.

The article, which Bassett co-authored with former UT graduate student Scott A. Conger, was published this month in Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly, a journal issued by Human Kinetics Inc.

The review should be helpful to those who want to create physical activity questionnaires and develop recommendations for people with disabilities.

It also would show people with disabilities that they can obtain health-enhancing benefits when they exercise moderately or vigorously, Bassett said.

“It might be simply wheeling their chair along while taking their dog for a walk or playing wheelchair basketball,” he said. “You can still burn a significant number of calories.”

Bassett co-authored another document entitled the “2011 Compendium of Physical Activities” for able-bodied people. The study, which was funded by National Institutes of Health, contains a list of activities that is continually updated and is widely used. But he saw a need to develop a comparable resource for those who use wheelchairs.

Bassett and Conger reviewed more than 250 studies containing energy expenditure data for wheelchair-related physical activities. They identified sixty-three activities, ranging from being sedentary to household chores and transportation to exercise.

The US Department of Health and Human Services recommends that adults with disabilities should get at least 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise or seventy-five minutes of vigorous exercise per week. The suggestion is the same for able-bodied people.

A partial list of wheelchair-related activities and their caloric burn (performed by a 160-pound adult in thirty minutes):

• Sitting, watching TV: 40
• Dusting: 65
• Table Tennis: 80
• Vacuuming: 98
• Basketball (shooting baskets): 116
• Tennis: 149
• Basketball (gameplay): 221
• Nordic sit skiing: 428

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C O N T A C T :

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)

Bill Black

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Thomas Coens of the Department of History will lecture on “New Revelations: Andrew Jackson and Indian Removal” at the U.S. Department of the Interior Museum in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, November 2. Coens is a research associate professor and associate editor of The Papers of Andrew Jackson.

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Leslee A. Fisher, an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies, has been inducted as a fellow of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, the international professional organization of sport and exercise psychology. She was selected for her significant contributions to academic and professional practice knowledge in sport and exercise psychology. Fisher, who is teaches sport psychology and motor behavior, specializes in moral and ethical decision-making, sociocultural aspects of sport participation, cultural sport psychology, and character development in sport.

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Kristi Gordon, associate professor in psychology, has received a three-year, $2.16 million demonstration grant from the Administration for Children and Families to implement the Marriage Check-up in community-based integrative health care facility. The Marriage Check-up is a new intervention that uses motivational interviewing principles to help couples at all levels of functioning to identify strengths and vulnerabilities in their relationships and increase their motivation to use their strengths to address the vulnerabilities and make their relationships stronger. The project will also provide groups to teach couples relationship skills and will partner with a local agency to provide groups to help them deal with major financial and employment issues.

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Jay Rubenstein, associate professor of history, has published a book which tells the story of the First Crusade (1095-1099) through the eyes of those who witnessed it, emphasizing the fundamental role that apocalyptic thought played in motivating the Crusaders. Entitled Armies of Heaven: the First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse, critics have called it a thrilling work of military and religious history that will revolutionize our understanding of the Crusades. The book hits store shelves in November. This is the second book Rubenstein has published this fall on the First Crusade. The Monodies and on the Relics of Saints was released in October.

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Xiaojun Wang, a graduate student in chemistry, has been selected as one of two recipients of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Graduate Travel Award to attend the 2012 ACS National Meeting in San Diego. The award is sponsored by the ACS Division of Polymer Chemistry’s Membership Committee. Each year, the committee provides funding for two polymer graduate students to travel to the ACS National Meeting and present their research results. Wang will deliver a presentation entitled “Microstructure Effects on Self-assembly of Polystyrene-b-Sulfonated Poly (cyclohexadiene)” to address an unexplored issue regarding self-assembly behavior of strong electrolyte block copolymers derived from dienes.

Chances are, they will give thanks for what they’ve learned from each other.

Fifteen undergraduates, all kinesiology or recreation and sport management majors, spent this semester in a first-of-its-kind service learning class sponsored by the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation and Sport Studies in the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences. The course is taught by Adjunct Professor Sarah Hillyer and doctoral student Ashleigh Huffman, director and assistant director of Sport 4 Peace (http://www.sport4peace.org ).

The Thanksgiving party will include a traditional feast, games and activities for the children and a store of collected household items for the families.

Hillyer said there are more than 130 Iraqi families with refugee status living in Knoxville. They are scattered throughout the community. Though they were professionals in Iraq, many of the refugees are unable to find comparable jobs here and are striving to make financial ends meet in a struggling U.S. economy.

Hillyer and Huffman told their class that service learning is more than logging volunteer hours; it involves the application of theories learned in the classroom to meet the needs of the community.

With the goal of providing some sort of exercise or recreational outlet for the Iraqis, the students’ first task was to figure out what the refugees wanted and needed.

With some assistance from Bridge Refugee Resettlement Agency, Hillyer and Huffman laid the groundwork by finding individual Iraqi families and visiting with them. The students then hosted a big welcome party for the refugees at the UT softball complex and took them to a UT women’s soccer game.

By engaging in conversations with the Iraqi families, UT students learned that the greatest concerns included social interaction, health and fitness, and opportunities for their children to play. To address those needs, the class created three social events for the families, held weekly exercise classes for the women and provided games and playtime for the children.

After a semester of interaction, Hillyer said refugee families and UT students have made new friends and enjoyed getting to know one another through various social outings.

“As I spoke with the Iraqi man … I realized he was just like my father,” said Cody Tarpley, a senior in the class. “In fact, he was an engineer back in Iraq, just like my dad is here in America. I realized that everything this class stands for is possible and that sports can be an effective way to bring people of different backgrounds together.”

At the beginning of the semester, Hillyer and Huffman asked their students to write down the first words that came to mind when they thought of Iraq.

The students’ responses included “terrorists,” “poor” and “war.”

Recently, the students did the same exercise. This time, their responses included “loving people,” “kind,” “grateful,” “hard workers” and “educated.”

“They see these people not as numbers or distant images on a TV screen,” Hillyer said. “They now see them as people, no different than their fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers.”

The service learning class will be offered again in the spring.

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CONTACT:

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@utk.edu)

The National Academy of Kinesiology is an honorary organization composed of people who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of kinesiology through scholarship and professional service. The National Academy promotes the study and educational applications of the art and science of human movement and physical activity. Fellows in the National Academy of Kinesiology reflect a “who’s who” of eminent scholars in the field.

Thompson, who is the head of the department at UT, is an expert in exercise physiology, and her research focuses on the link between physical activity and health. She is a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, editor-in-chief of the Fit Society Page Newsletter and associate editor-in-chief for ACSM’s Health and Fitness Journal. Thompson is a past president of the Southeast Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine and past chair of the Physical Fitness Council of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.

Bassett’s area of expertise is exercise physiology, and much of his research focuses on developing tools and techniques that allow physical activity energy expenditure to be objectively monitored. His research has been funded by various agencies, including the National Institutes of Health. Bassett is a fellow and a Board of Trustees member of the American College of Sports Medicine. He has served as a member of the science advisory board of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. He is co-director of UT Knoxville’s Obesity Research Center.

For additional information on the National Academy of Kinesiology (formerly the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education, AAKPE), refer to the academy’s website or call the business office at 217-403-7545.

C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)