On October 10, Juergen Konczak, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory, presented a lecture on robotic rehabilitation to the PACE network community in Genova, Italy.
PACE stands for Perception and Action in Complex Environments. The network is funded by the European Union and seeks to train predoctoral students with a background in engineering, mathematics, neuroscience, and psychology.
Katie Koopmeiners, undergraduate academic adviser for the School of Kinesiology, will be presenting at the Academic Advising Network’s first session in their professional development series, “Branding You.” The title of her presentation is “Creating an Advising Philosophy.”
Koopmeiners, who advises in the areas of Recreation Administration, Sport Management, and Coaching, will discuss the importance of an advising philosophy in a working session that will help new and seasoned advisers formalize their guiding principles in their advising practice. Participants will consider their advising style, strengths and theoretical basis to develop their own personal advising philosophy.
The session will be held Tuesday, October 24, from 10:30-noon in Nolte 140.
Arash Mahnan, Kinesiology Ph.D. student and IT Fellow, is one of three people featured in the Global Programs and Strategy Alliance online newsletter, Global U, promoting Driven: The University of Minnesota Campaign, the first system-wide fundraising campaign at the U of M in more than a decade. The Alliance has set a goal of raising $7 million to “Drive a Global U.”
Mahnan discusses his goal to fill the gap between engineering and clinical research, and the imperative to attract top students and faculty from around the world to come to the University of Minnesota. He is a student in the area of biomechanics and neural control and is advised by Juergen Konczak, Ph.D.
Read Mahnan’s feature here.
School of Kinesiology alumna Mackenzie Lobby Havey, M.A., will read her recently published book, Mindful Running: How Meditative Running Can Improve Performance and Make You a Happier, More Fulfilled Person, at the U of M Bookstore in Coffman Memorial Union on the Minneapolis campus on Tuesday, October 17, at 4 p.m.
In her book, Havey, who is a runner, coach, and fitness journalist, describes her personal experience with meditative running and the influence it has had on her life.
“I discovered that when I integrated the principles of mindfulness into my daily running practice, it boosted my joy in the process of training, as well as my performance, and I wanted to share that in this book,” she says. “As I began to deconstruct my own mindful running routine and talk to Olympians, paralympians, and researchers in the fields of contemplative neuroscience and sports psychology, I found that I wasn’t the only one who had experienced significant benefit from combining mindfulness with physical training. Mindful Running is all about learning to run the mile you are in and train smarter, not harder–to find new ways to relate to your body, mind, and environment to deal with things like discomfort, fatigue, and negative thinking with intentionality and ease. My hope is that some of the lessons learned on the run will find their way into other parts of your life as well.”
Havey graduated with her master’s degree in 2009 in the Sport and Exercise Psychology emphasis area and was advised by Prof. Diane Wiese-Bjornstal. She is currently teaching a Beginning Running class in the School’s Physical Activity Program.
Andrew Stelter, Kinesiology B.S. senior and defensive lineman for the Gopher football team, is a semifinalist for the 2017 William V. Campbell Trophy, a National Football Foundation (NFF) award. The award recognizes the most impressive group of scholar-athletes in college football. Stelter has a current cumulative GPA of 3.61 and serves on the Gopher’s football leadership council. He will graduate in December.
Finalists for the Trophy will be announced November 1. Each will receive an $18,000 postgraduate scholarship as a member of the NFF National Scholar-Athlete Class.
Read the full story here.
School of Kinesiology senior lecturer George Biltz, M.D., will be attending the Pediatric Work Physiology Meeting XXX, October 3-8, in Katerini in Macedonia, Greece. The conference is sponsored by the European Group of Pediatric Work Physiology, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
On Oct. 6, Biltz will present a poster he co-authored with Kinesiology alumnus Christopher Lundstrom, Ph.D., titled “Time series variability of steady state RER, tidal volume and VO2 show a common response to marathon training in older adolescents.” The poster is a continuation of research on physiological time series analysis that they previously reported on at PWP 2015 in Utrecht ,Netherlands, and at the North American Society for Pediatric Exercise Medicine (NASPEM) in 2016 in Knoxville, TN. Biltz will also co-chair an oral presentation session on Oct. 7 on Physical Activity.
Daheia Barr-Anderson, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of the Behavioral Physical Activity Laboratory in the School of Kinesiology, will participate in the event “Pathways to Self-Care and Wellness for Empowering Girls and Women from Indigenous Communities and Communities of Color” Saturday, September 30, 9 a.m. to noon at the Walker Community United Methodist Church in Minneapolis. Barr-Anderson will serve as moderator for the panel discussion on strategies to empower these female communities. She will also lead movement activities.
The event is free and open to the public. Complete details are available here.
The Star Tribune published an article on the remarkable story of the Twin Cities’ women’s professional basketball team, the Lynx, tracing their challenges as a struggling young team getting their first real breaks through their years of hard work, setbacks, explosive talent, and inspiring teamwork that has led to three WNBA titles and their current pursuit of a fourth. Lindsay Whelan, Lynx starting point guard, is a Kinesiology alumna and Gopher women’s basketball star.
Tucker Center director Mary Jo Kane, Ph.D., and co-director Nicole LaVoi, Ph.D., both faculty in the School of Kinesiology, are quoted in the article titled: “How the Lynx captivated a city and built from the floor up.”
Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, Ph.D., School of Kinesiology professor and director of the Sports Medicine Psychology Lab (SMPL), will be giving an invited lecture at the Mayo Clinic Ice Hockey Summit III: Action on Concussion in Rochester, MN, on September 28-29. Her presentation, which will focus on psychological and social influences on concussion risks in ice hockey, is titled “Which ice hockey players are at greatest concussion risks and why?”
Nicole LaVoi, Ph.D., Kinesiology lecturer and co-director of the Tucker Center, will also be giving a presentation. She will speak on “Incorporating the ‘Summit III Action Plan’ into Policy and Social Media.”
The conference as a whole will address advances in concussion diagnosis, treatment and prevention with an emphasis on prioritized action items to improve safety in the sport of ice hockey, and is targeted to health care providers in a number of specialty areas. Aynsley Smith, R.N., Ph.D., one of the two Summit course directors, is an alumna of the School (Ph.D., 1995). More information about the summit is available here.
A 2016 graduate of the School of Kinesiology has been nominated for a prestigious award recognizing athletic and academic achievement and community service.
Ryan Santoso, a Gopher punter who received his B.S. in Sport Management in Fall, 2016, has been nominated for the 2017 Wuerffel Trophy, awarded to the FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) player that best combines exemplary community service with athletic and academic achievement.
During his time at the U, Santoso has volunteered for numerous organizations– Children’s Hospital, the Boys and Girls Club, Luxton Learning Center, and with various sports camps– all while performing exceptionally in the classroom and on the field. He continues his academic and football career this year as a master’s student in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs studying nonprofit management.
Santoso’s story was featured this week in the U of M’s online News & Events section.
Zan Gao, Ph.D., associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Physical Activity Epidemiology Laboratory (PAEL), is co-author on an article in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy titled “The Relationship Between Accelerometer-Determined Physical Activity and Clinical Low Back Pain Measures in Adolescents With Chronic or Sub-Acute Recurrent Low Back Pain.” The study examined the relationship between objective physical activity measures assessed by accelerometers and standard clinical measures (pain intensity, disability, quality of life) in a sample of adolescents with recurrent or chronic low back pain (LBP). The study found that objectively measured physical activity was very weakly and not importantly associated with self-rated LBP intensity, disability, and quality of life.
Gao serves as corresponding author and first co-author on the article. He collaborated with doctoral advisees Zachary Pope and Nan Zeng, as well as colleagues Brent Leininger, DC, MS, Gert Bronfort, DC, PhD, and Roni Evans, DC, PhD, from the U of M’s Center for Spirituality and Healing, and Mitchell Haas, DC, MA, from the University of Western States.
Tiffany Richardson, Ph.D., lecturer in Sport Management in the School of Kinesiology, is part of this year’s Sustainability Education Summit, organized by the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. On September 15, all five University of Minnesota campus digitally co-hosted this event. Dr. Richardson, who is an IonE educator, talked about her involvement in teaching innovation in sustainability.
Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL), gave an invited talk at the 87th annual meeting of the National Academy of Kinesiology in Washington, DC, on September 16. His presentation was titled “Ecological physics and the perceptual information for motor control.“
Lisa A. Kihl, Ph.D., associate professor of sport management in the School of Kinesiology, attended and presented at the European Association for Sport Management held September 5-8 in Bern, Switzerland.
The title of Dr. Kihl’s presentation was “Examining the Dimensions of Athlete Representation in Sport Governance”. Vicki D. Schull, Ph.D., a 2014 graduate of the School of Kinesiology and current assistant professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and Caroline Heffernan, Ph.D. candidate were co-authors on the presentation.
In honor of Title IX’s 45th year, Contexts magazine publishes a piece “title ix at xlv” with several viewpoints on this topic. Nicole LaVoi, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the School of Kinesiology and co-director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, contributed the essay “Woman Want to Coach“.
Other essays in this article are “Title IX at 45” by Cheryl Cooky, “Where All Kids Can Compete” by Erin Buzuvis, and “Union Busting and the Title IX Straw Man” by Ellen J. Staurowsky.
Contexts magazine’s goal is to make cutting-edge social research accessible to general readers.
As part of the Illinois State University Speaker Series, Mary Jo Kane, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, will talk on October 25 about the social and political implications of Title IX. Her Esther Larson McGinnis Scholar Lecture is titled “The Impact, Challenges and Opportunities Surrounding Title IX 45-Years After Passage”. Read the entire announcement here.
An article reviewing the lecture, “ISU Guest Speaker: Title IX Has Absolutely Helped Female Athletes,” appears in Illinois State University’s WGLT 89.1FM Radio’s online newsletter.
Donald Dengel, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Laboratory of Integrative Human Physiology, published with colleagues in the Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology.
Dengel’s former graduate student Marlatt Kara, Ph.D., now a postdoctoral researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, LA, is the lead author of the article titled “The Effect of Atorvastatin on Vascular Function and Structure in Young Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer: A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Pilot Clinical Trial.” This pilot study examines the development of cardiovascular disease in childhood cancer survivors.
Co-author Aaron Kelly, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Minnesota, also received his doctoral degree in the School of Kinesiology.
Zan Gao, Ph.D., associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Physical Activity Epidemiology Lab (PAEL), was reappointed as a high-end foreign expert on Physical Activity and Health by the People’s Republic of China for summer 2017. During his appointment tenure, Gao was based at Hunan Normal University (Changsha, China) and stayed in China for one month over the summer.
During his stay, Gao delivered a series of lectures on physical activity and health, helped the university establish the discipline in physical activity and health, offered a number of workshops to faculty and students, as well as trained the faculty and graduate students in conducting a cutting-edge research project. Gao is an alumnus of Hunan Normal University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in physical education.
In addition, Gao was selected as the Foreign Outstanding Instructor by Hunan Province of China in summer 2017. He was based at Huaihua University, where he delivered a course titled “Advances in Physical Activity and Health,” as well as mentored the faculty and students in conducting two research projects in the university and local rural communities. Gao’s lectures have been well-received by the students and faculty members at Huaihua University.
Jürgen Konczak, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory, is the PI on a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program.
This program prepares scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the university laboratory and to accelerate basic-research projects that are ready to move toward commercialization. The aim of this grant is to move forward the lab’s robotic rehabilitation technology that is jointly developed with partners in Italy and Singapore. As part of this grant, a team consisting of postdoctoral researcher Naveen Elangovan (entrepreneurial lead), Jürgen Konczak and Pat Tarnowski as a business adviser is formed. Pat is a trained PT with an MBA and is currently the Senior Director of Clinical Health Solutions at BCBS of Minnesota. The team will work closely with NSF staff and advisers to explore and understand the U.S. market.
Nicole LaVoi, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the School of Kinesiology and co-director of the Tucker Center, published an article on the importance of increasing the number of women coaching women’s sport teams in SportsBusiness Journal. While the number of women playing college sports has increased dramatically since the passage of Title IX in 1972, the number of women coaching them has decreased, from 90% in 1974 to 40% today.
“One hundred percent of male athletes have had a male coaching role model during their athletic careers, to their benefit,” writes LaVoi. “Young women likewise need and deserve more same sex role models.”
LaVoi helps produce the annual Women in College Coaching Report Card, which gives conferences and sports a grade of A through F for the percentage of women head coaches for women’s teams. She states that the Report Card provides accountability, creates awareness and helps stimulate a national dialogue on women in the coaching profession.
