From the Chair - Fall 2025
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We are now well into our fall 2025 semester and I am happy to report that the Department of Kinesiology is thriving! No doubt we are in challenging times in academia but, as you will read in this newsletter, we have wonderfully talented and collegial faculty and staff that continues to ensure our students’ success as well as our excellence in research.
The department currently has 14 tenured/tenure-track faculty, 7 full-time lecturers, 2 research faculty, 3 administrative staff, 2 full-time undergraduate advisors, approximately 650 undergraduate majors, ~40 graduate students, and several postdoctoral fellows. Its research and teaching activities are organized into the areas of Biomechanics, Movement Neuroscience, Physical Activity & Health and Physiology. Our research spans the entire range from the molecular level, how actin and myosin interact, to community-based physical activity promotion programs.
In this newsletter you will see some of the wonderful and exciting activities that our faculty and students have been involved in. Our success is across the board, with one of our lecturer faculty, Eliza Frechette, winning the prestigious University Distinguished Teaching Award. In research, several of our tenure-track faculty received significant research grant funding, including Ned Debold obtaining an R35 NIH career award, Wouter Hoogkamer a National Science Foundation grant on wearable technologies and, last but not least, Katherine Boyer and Jane Kent an R01 on energy cost of walking and aging. I am also excited to report that we are in the process of developing extended MS degree programs in Human Performance (with a focus on strength and conditioning) and Sport Science, targeting data analytics.
The department has several important scholarships supporting undergraduate and graduate students. These include the Patty Freedson Undergraduate Health and Wellness Scholarship, the Frank Rife Undergraduate Scholarship in Kinesiology supporting student internships, and the Priscilla Clarkson Graduate Scholarship in Kinesiology, supporting dissertation research. Support for these scholarships contributes in a very important way to our students’ success and career opportunities.
I am also pleased to announce that this year we will be celebrating our 60th anniversary! The department was established in 1965 as the first to be named “Exercise Science” and later renamed to Department of Kinesiology. We will have a celebration with our undergraduate students this coming spring and in June are organizing a research symposium for graduate alumni. This event is planned in the new School of Public Health and Health Sciences student hub, which will open in the spring of 2026 next to our good-old Totman building on campus!
I hope you enjoy catching up with the happenings in the Department of Kinesiology. We have lots of great news to report and hope that you consider submitting newsworthy items to include in our future newsletters. We would love to hear from you!
Richard van Emmerik, PhD, FNAK
Professor and Chair, Director of Motor Control Laboratory
Department of Kinesiology