Thul awarded 2016 Community and Outreach Engagement Staff Award

Chelsey Thul, Ph.D., lecturer in the School of Kinesiology, received Chelsey ThulCEHD’s 2016 Community and Outreach Engagement Staff Award in a ceremony April 19.

Thul won for her work in creating a unique partnership with the local Somali community that resulted in Girls’ Initiative in Recreation and Leisurely Sports (GIRLS), a program designed to provide opportunities for East African adolescent girls in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis to engage in sports and physical activity.  Through this program, she and her partners designed culturally relevant uniforms for girls that allowed freedom of movement while remaining covered, the first-ever sports uniform for Muslim girls. In addition, Thul and her partners worked with Somali leaders to ensure the girls had equal time and access to community spaces for sports.

Thul’s nomination letter stated, “the community engagement and participatory research design Dr. Thul employed is second to none….Clearly, Dr. Thul is an individual always striving to do the right thing for the right reason, which stems from a genuine and authentic personal moral code.”