Richardson, All-Stars Green Team featured in CE+HD Connect

May 3, 2016

allstars4WEB — Dr. Richardson, right, with alum Amanda Rodriguez at 2014 All-Star game.

Tiffany Richardson, Ph.D., lecturer in Sport Management in the School of Kinesiology, was featured in the just-released CE+HD Connect from the College of Education and Human Development. Richardson’s Green Team, made up of a select group of U of M sport management students, has been a prominent fixture at Major League Baseball All-Star Games and events, beginning two years ago with her germ of an idea to promote stadium sustainability through recycling, composting, and efforts related to educating about reuse and conservation. “Sustainability All-Stars” traces the inaugural Green Team Richardson launched in 2014 to the hugely successful endeavor she manages today.

Freshman Kalli Fautsch uses U of M Undergraduate Research Scholarship to study in PAEL

May 3, 2016

Kalli Fautsch, CLA freshman studying physiology and psychology, is using her U of M Undergraduate Research Scholarship, awarded to her as an incoming freshman, to work with Zan Gao, Ph.D., assistant professor in Kinesiology and director of the Physical Activity Epidemiology Laboratory (PAEL), and Zachary Pope, Kinesiology Ph.D. student and graduate research assistant in PAEL. Fautsch has been working with Gao and Pope on a research project comparing physical activity, on-task behavior, and communication among children with Autism Spectrum Disorders in exergaming and physical education settings. Fautsch has an interest in sports medicine and has been involved in related research in PAEL since last fall.

Visiting scholar Dr. Victor Rubio attends “Baltimore’s Community Awakening” seminar in Maryland

May 3, 2016

Victor-Rubio-2016 Víctor J. Rubio, Ph.D., CCP, a School of Kinesiology Fulbright visiting scholar from the University Autonoma Madrid in Spain, participated in the seminar “Baltimore’s Community Awakening – The Role of Anchor Institutions and Grassroots Organizations in Addressing the City’s Health and Human Rights Issue,” which was organized in a partnership between IIE/CIES and the World Trade Institute of Baltimore, and sponsored by The Fulbright Program and State Department. The seminar was held in Baltimore, MD from April 19th through April 22nd, and presented an overview of difficulties that the city faces, as well as initiatives that have been put in place in order to cope with social, health economic and racial issues.

Kin Ph.D. June Lee awarded SHAPE America $2500 Graduate Student Research Grant

May 2, 2016

June Lee, doctoral student in the School of Kinesiology, has been awarded a 2016-17 SHAPE America Graduate Student Research Grant. The $2500 grant will be used to conduct a study examining elementary school children’s physical activity and psychosocial beliefs in mobile application-based physical education classes. Lee is advised by Zan Gao, Ph.D., assistant professor of behavioral aspects of physical activity and director of the School’s Physical Activity Epidemiology Laboratory. The SHAPE America Graduate Student Grant Program, sponsored by the Society of Health and Physical Educators, has awarded over $600,000 in funding since its inception in 1997. Last year, grants were awarded to just four graduate students across the country.

Zhang awarded Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

April 28, 2016

Tino Zhang

Doctoral candidate Tianou “Tino” Zhang has been awarded a prestigious Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for the 2016-2017 academic year from the University of Minnesota’s Graduate School.

Zhang’s research, “Dietary Antioxidant Protection against Inflammation in Exercise and Obesity,” is conducted in the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene and Exercise Science. Zhang intends to research whether oats and olive oil supplementation can increase antioxidant capacity and reduce inflammation in heavy exercise and obesity. He is advised by LPHES lab director, Dr. Li Li Ji

The Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) gives the University’s most accomplished doctoral candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to finalize and write a dissertation during the fellowship year. The award includes a stipend of $23,000 for the academic year (September-May), tuition for up to 14 thesis credits each semester (fall & spring), and subsidized health insurance through the Graduate Assistant Health Plan.

Ji gives keynote address on Globalization of Kinesiology at ICHPER-SD conference

April 26, 2016

Li Li Ji, Ph.D., director and professor in the School of Kinesiology, gave an opening keynote address on “Globalization of Kinesiology” at the SHAPE America National Convention and Exposition held in Minneapolis earlier this month. Ji’s keynote was presented to the International Council on Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport, and Dance (ICHPER-SD), which met in conjunction with SHAPE America. His keynote is available at this link.

Thul awarded 2016 Community and Outreach Engagement Staff Award

April 25, 2016

Chelsey Thul, Ph.D., lecturer in the School of Kinesiology, received CEHD’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.”

HPTL hosts 25 high school students for Scrubs, Gloves, and Microscopes

April 22, 2016

Last Friday the School of Kinesiology’s Human Performance Teaching Laboratory (HPTL) hosted 25 high school students from schools around the metro area who participated in the University’s Scrubs, Gloves & Microscopes program, which provides health careers exploration experiences for students in grades 9-12. Under the direction of HPTL lab manager Nick Evanoff, Kinesiology graduate students Christiana Raymond, Alex Kasak, Michelle Harbin, and Tianou Zhang, and undergraduate student Ezra Dordal, demonstrated laboratory exercises on Wingate testing, ultrasound imaging, body composition, anatomy and electrocardiogram. HPTL directors are Kinesiology professors Donald Dengel, Ph.D. and Juergen Konczak, Ph.D.

School of Kinesiology professors meet with Guatemalan Olympic Committee

April 21, 2016

Last week, School Kinesiology Drs. Christopher Lundstrom, George Biltz, and Donald
Dengel traveled to Guatemala City, Guatemala to meet with members of the Guatemalan Sports Confederation and the Guatemalan Olympic C ommittee to evaluate the two programs.

In addition to evaluating the two sports programs, Drs. Lundstrom, Biltz and Dengel presented to the staff and members of both the Guatemalan Sports Confederation and the Guatemalan Olympic Committee. Dr. Lundstrom presented on “Exercise Testing and Assessment” and “Development of Training Programs Theory” on April 13th. On April 14th, Dr. Dengel gave two presentations: “Sports Nutrition: Fueling Athletes to the Olympics” and “Body Composition Assessment for Sport.” Dr. Biltz gave two presentations on April 15th. The first being “Physiological Variability Analysis – Potential Applications” and the second being “Pediatric Sports Injuries – A Functional Approach.”

The representatives from the School of Kinesiology also engaged in discussions regarding future collaborations with the Guatemalan Sports Confederation and the Guatemalan Olympic Committee, as well as study abroad opportunities for School of Kinesiology students.

Stoffregen’s research to be published in JEP:HPP

April 14, 2016

Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., School of Kinesiology, Jeffrey B. Wagman, Ph.D., and Sarah E. Caputo’s research, entitled “Hierarchical nesting of affordances in a tool use task,” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance (JEP:HPP). JEP:HPP is one of the most selective journals in the behavioral sciences, with an impact factor of 3.358.

Stroffregens’s co-authors are both from Illinois State University, where Wagman is a Professor of Psychology and Caputo is an undergraduate student.

Kinesiology’s PAEL researchers and students present at SHAPE America, ICSPAH conferences

April 12, 2016

The School of Kinesiology’s Physical Activity Epidemiology Lab (PAEL) had a busy week at the 2016 Society for Health and Physical Educators National Convention (SHAPE America) and its partner, the International Chinese Society for Physical Activities and Health Academic Symposium (ICSPAH).

SHAPE American and ICSPAH held conferences concurrently at the Minneapolis Convention Center April 5-9. PAEL lab director and Kinesiology assistant professor Zan Gao, Ph.D., and Kinesiology doctoral students and advisees June Lee and Zachary Pope presented at a number of sessions, as well Dr. Ying Zhang, visiting scholar; Nan Zeng, visiting doctoral student; Sarah Swenson, MEd alum; and recent undergraduate alumni Rebecca Nelson, Katherine Kaase, Hannah Niswonger, and Nicole Cheung.

Below is a full listing of the lab’s presentations with School of Kinesiology presenters.

ICSPAH Academic Symposium:

Exergaming and motor skills among youth and young adults: A systematic review (Zeng, Gao)
Exergaming and rehabilitation in older adults: A systematic review (Lee, Gao)
Secular trends in relationship among psychosocial beliefs, physical activity intention and behavior among children (Lee, Gao)
Effects of exergaming intervention on children’s psychosocial beliefs and school day energy expenditure (Pope, Lee, and Gao)
Assessing the preference of ball color distribution and structure through eye-tracker experiment in preschool children (Zhang, Pope)

SHAPE America National Convention:

Effect of exergaming on children’s energy expenditure and physical activity (Gao, Lee)
Children’s energy expenditure and physical activity during weekdays and weekends (Gao, Lee)
Impact of exergaming on children’s motor skills and health-related fitness (Lee, Gao)
Relationships among children’s psychosocial beliefs, physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness (Lee, Gao)
Exergaming and children’s before- and after-school physical activity behaviors (Pope, Lee, and Gao)
Effects of exergaming on urban children’s physical activity and fitness (Pope, Lee, and Gao)
Effects of active video games on rehabilitation outcomes among patients (Nelson, Kaase, Niswonger, Cheung, Pope, and Gao)
Objectively-measured determined physical activity levels during structured exercise among home-school children (Swenson, Cheung, Pope, and Gao)
Effects of Exerbike on adults’ physical activity and situational motivation (Gao)
Effects of exercise on health outcomes among risk older adults (Gao)

Zhang presents poster at American Society for Nutrition annual meeting in San Diego

April 11, 2016

Tianou Zhang, Kinesiology Ph.D. candidate advised by Li Li Ji, Ph.D., professor and director in the School of Kinesiology, presented his research study on “Oat Avenanthramides (AVA) Are Bioavailable in Humans after Acute Consumption of Oat Cookies”at a poster session at the 80th American Society for Nutrition Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting in conjunction with Experimental Biology 2016 held April 2-6 in San Diego.

Avenanthramide (AVA), a bioactive compound found only in oats, has been shown to exert antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. Mr. Zhang examined the metabolic fate of orally ingested oat AVA by measuring plasma AVA concentrations and their pharmacological characteristics. His research findings showed that AVA found naturally in oats can be absorbed in humans after consuming natural oat cookies. The abstract is available here.

Mr. Zhang is a research assistant for Dr. Ji in the School’s Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene and Exercise Science.

Holst-Wolf, Zhang finalists in CEHD Three Minute Thesis competition

April 7, 2016

On March 22, 2016, School of Kinesiology doctoral candidates, Jessica Holst-Wolf (biomechanics emphasis) and Tianou Zhang (exercise physiology emphasis), along with six other CEHD PhD students had three minutes to concisely and effectively explain their research project in language appropriate to a non-specialist audience in CEHD’s new Research Day competition, Three Minute Thesis (3MT). Presentations were evaluated by a panel of judges on criteria related to comprehension, engagement, and communication style.

Judges for the event were: Dr. Keith Mayes, CLA Professor; R.T. Rybak, former Minneapolis mayor and current Executive Director of Generation Next; and Margie Soran, Executive Director of the Soran Foundation. Michelle Brown (ICD) was the first-place winner.

You can watch Holst-Wolf and Zhang’s three minute presentations, along with the other six presentations on CEHD’s Youtube Channel.

Gao publishes in Journal of Sports Sciences

April 4, 2016

Zan Gao, Ph.D., Kinesiology assistant professor and director of the Physical Activity Epidemiology Laboratory, recently published a first-authored paper titled “Investigating elementary school children’s daily physical activity and sedentary behaviors during weekdays” in Journal of Sports Sciences.

The purpose of the study was to quantify the contributions of physical education, exergaming (active video games that also are a type of exercise), recess, lunch break and after-school time segments to children’s daily physical activity and sedentary behaviors. The researchers found that physical education was more effective in generating moderate-to-vigorous physical activity than other segments over the school day. The after-school segment holds potential as an avenue for promoting children’s moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, as this long period could be better utilized to organize structured physical activity.

The citation is: Gao, Z., Chen, S., Huang, C., Stodden, D., & Xiang, P. (2016). Investigating elementary school children’s daily physical activity and sedentary behaviors during weekdays. Journal of Sports Sciences. Published online: 07 Mar 2016 (impact factor: 2.25)

Kinesiology alum, adviser involved in multi-million NIH grant

April 4, 2016

Kinesiology alumnus Aaron Kelly, Ph.D. (2004), associate professor of pediatrics and medicine in the U of M Department of Pediatrics, and a colleague, Dr. Jennifer Abuzzahab, received a pilot grant in 2010 from the Clinical and Translational Science Institute to study severe obesity in children. That pilot grant paved the way for a multi-million NIH grant and resulted in the creation of a pediatric obesity research consortium among four major health organizations in Minnesota.

The CTSI-funded pilot project explored the potential of using a drug originally designed for adults with type 2 diabetes to help treat severe obesity in teenagers. Adolescent participants who took the drug achieved clinically significant weight loss and demonstrated improvements in risk factors for diabetes and heart disease.

Dr. Kelly’s doctoral adviser, Donald Dengel, Ph.D., Kinesiology professor and director of the Laboratory of Integrative Physiology, is working with Dr. Kelly on the grant measuring body composition in subjects. More information is available at this link.

U of M expands relationship with China, planning dual-degree sport management master’s program with Shanghai Jiao Tong University

March 31, 2016

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed on Monday between the University of Minnesota and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), symbolizing a mutual commitment to collaboration, which will include a dual-degree sport management master’s program housed in both the School of Kinesiology and SJTU’s Department of Physical Education.

Hanson, Xu signing the MOU between the U of MN and SJTU

SJTU Vice President Lisa Xu and U of M Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Karen Hanson are pictured signing the MOU that will create an exchange program between the School of Kinesiology’s Master of Education (M.Ed.) sport management program and graduate students at SJTU.

The School of Kinesiology has a long-standing relationship with higher education institutions in China, including initiating the China Champions Program and running the American Cultural Center for Sport at Tianjin University of Sport.

Learn more about our unique practitioner-oriented sport management master of education (M.Ed.) program.

June Lee accepts Kinesiology tenure-track position at UMD

March 28, 2016

Kinesiology doctoral student June Lee has accepted a tenure-track position with the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Lee will be an assistant professor in the department of Applied Human Sciences in the College of Education and Human Service Professions beginning next August. She will be teaching courses in motor learning and development and behavioral aspects of physical activity. Lee will continue to work with her Kinesiology adviser, Zan Gao, Ph.D., in the Physical Activity Epidemiology Lab after she and her family move to Duluth.

Stoffregen quoted in Muscle and Fitness

March 28, 2016

Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., School of Kinesiology professor and director of the APAL lab, was interviewed for an article in Muscle and Fitness on why we can feel nauseous while watching videos during cardio workouts. Read the story here.

Magnuson and Hoffman tour Panama for new REC adventure course

March 28, 2016

Connie Magnuson, Ph.D., director of the School of Kinesiology’s Recreation Administration program, and Brandi Hoffman, director of Kinesiology’s Physical Activity Program, spent spring break trying to catch the perfect wave while surfing the stunning, blue-green Caribbean Ocean in Panama.

This was one of many activities they scouted for a new learning abroad course in Bocasdel Toro, a unique and richly diverse archipelago on the northern coast. They also visited the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, School of Field Studies, and the Sea Turtle Conservancy, and held discussions with local community organizations and advocates Give and Surf and La Loma Jungle Lodge and Chocolate Farm. The course, REC 4191 Adventure Recreation, Tourism and Eco-tourism: Surf Panama!, examines the rapidly growing tourism industry in Panama and the impact that providing adventure recreation and other tourist attractions can have on the economy, the environment, and the indigenous communities. This program is part of a larger initiative the University of Minnesota is undertaking with interests in Panama for education and research through the U of M’s Global Programs and Strategy Alliance.

Surf Panama! will be offered during spring break 2017 and includes a variety of adventures along with surfing, including ziplining, jungle hikes, anfibia boarding, paddling in Cayuga (dugout) canoes, cave exploring and snorkeling. Registration opens this summer.

Kinesiology alum Hayley Russell leads concussion seminar at Penn State Altoona

March 28, 2016

Hayley Russell, Ph.D., Kinesiology alumna (2014) and assistant professor of Kinesiology at Penn State University-Altoona, was featured in a news story for a seminar she conducted on concussions, the “invisible” injury. She spoke to student athletes during the university’s Brain Awareness Week. Dr. Russell’s emphasis was Physical Activity and Sport Science and she was advised by Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, Ph.D., professor of Kinesiology and director of the Sports Medicine Psychology Lab.

CEHD News Kinesiology

CEHD News Kinesiology