The 2009 NCAA Scholarly Colloquium will take place January 13-14 during the annual NCAA convention in Washington, DC. The theme for the colloquium is, "Paying the Price: Is Excellence in Sport Compatible with Good Health?" Maureen Weiss, professor in the School of Kinesiology, has co-organized this second annual colloquium. An article featuring the colloquium appears in The NCAA News.
Check out Ashoka’s Changemakers in GameChangers: Change the Game for Women in Sport, a search to identify the best sport innovations that challenge the barriers girls and women face around the world. Visit the Changemakers' website to submit entries, collaborate on ideas, and learn more about the coalition of extraordinary individuals uniting to bring about change.
Austin Calhoun, PhD student and Tucker Center Research Assistant, and Dr. Nicole LaVoi, Associate Director of the Tucker Center, were accepted to present a poster at the the Sport, Sexuality, and Culture Conference to be held March 18-20, 2009 in Ithaca, N.Y. The research is titled Examining Online Intercollegiate Head Coaches' Biographies: Reproducing or Challenging Heteronormativity and Heterosexism?.
Dr. Nicole LaVoi, with co-authors Megan Babkes Stellino and Kristina Moore (University of Northern Colorado) will present a poster, The Relation Between Perceived Parent Created Sport Climate and Competitive Youth Hockey Players' Good and Poor Sport Behaviors at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development (SRCD, www.srcd.org) to be held in Denver, Colo., on April 2-4, 2009.
USA Today has several stories related to the academic performance of student-athletes at Division I schools. A related (and feature) story involves a nationally recognized and highly-praised task force at the U of M co-chaired by Mary Jo Kane. Check it out here.
Maureen Weiss, professor of kinesiology and co-director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, and David Goodman, professor of kinesiology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C., received a $90,000 grant over three years from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a proposal titled, "Changing Attitudes and Behaviors of Youth Hockey Players by Innovative Educational Interventions." The project seeks to reduce incidence of concussions among youth hockey players by educating youth about the impact of violent plays on incidence of injury and educating coaches and parents about how their actions influence players' attitudes and behaviors.
In the current issue of the University's Department of Recreational Sports Wellness Works magazine now in your mailbox, the School of Kinesiology and the Tucker Center are highly visible: Dr. Beth Lewis has the feature article on pages 3-5 and Dr. Maureen Weiss' The First Tee project is featured on page 21. In addition, Dr. Weiss is featured as a "Face of Wellness" on page 8. Congratulations to both our faculty.
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro will be presenting the first annual Girls In Sports Symposium in February. Dr. Maureen Weiss, co-director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at The University of Minnesota, will deliver the keynote address.
We have been notified by the Office of the VP for Research that Dr. Nicole LaVoi’s work in the Tucker Center will be featured in the University's upcoming Research Annual Report. Congratulations, Dr. LaVoi!
Dr. Nicole LaVoi and Chelsey Thul, Ph.D student, will present their research on underserved girls at the 2009 Active Living Research (ALR) Annual Conference to be held February 18-20, 2009 in San Diego, Calif. Active Living Research is a national program of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. The project titled Reducing Physical Inactivity and Promoting Active Living: From the Voices of East African Girls was funded by the Melpomene Institute for Women's Health Research.
The Tucker Center has released a full-length video of its Fall Distinguished Lecture, which featured three Minnesota track and field Olympians: Janis Klecker, Carrie Tollefson and Shani Marks. The lecture was moderated by U of M Professor of Sociology Doug Hartmann. To view the video online, go to the Tucker Center home page.
Jill Haom, a 2008 Summer Tucker Center McNair Scholar, has been selected as one of five U of M students who will present research at the 2008 National McNair Research Conference October 28-30th in Delavan, Wisconsin. She will present her project Unequal Opportunities, Unequal Outcomes: The Physical Activity of East African Girls, which was funded by the Melpomene Institute for Women’s Health Research. Congratulations Jill!
The 2007 Tucker Center Research Report: Developing Physically Active Girls (TCRR) continues to make an impact! The TCRR is cited numerous times in Go Out and Play: Youth Sports in America, an extensive report that measures the nationwide participation rates of girls and boys in exercise and organized team sports. The report, authored by Don Sabo and Phil Veliz, was released October 18, 2008 by the Women's Sports Foundation and The Center for Research on Physical Activity, Sport & Health at D’Youville College. The report can be downloaded here.
The School of Kinesiology's Maureen Weiss, professor of Kinesiology and co-director of the Tucker Center, has set up a blog for her 3-week trip to five universities in China—Beijing, Tianjin, Chengdu, Xian, Shanghai—from October 9-23. You can read more about Dr. Weiss's endeavors at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/kin/weissinchina2008/.
Nicole LaVoi will be featured in an article on overscheduled children in the fall volume of Stemwinder, a publication for St. Paul/Minneapolis 3M employees and retirees.
The Minnesota Daily has published a front page article featuring Professor Maureen Weiss's trip to China with other Big Ten Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) kinesiology professors. The article can be accessed here.
Diane M. Wiese-Bjornstal and Nicole M. LaVoi will give an Action Item presentation based on The 2007 Tucker Center Research Report - Developing Physically Active Girls: An Evidence-based Multidisciplinary Approach at the Action on Obesity Summit being held at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN on October 16-17, 2008.
Professor Maureen Weiss and Dr. Nicole LaVoi (Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport) are featured on a panel presentation for the College of Education and Human Development's Women’s Philanthropic Leadership Circle Fall Program on Monday, October 27, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at the U of M's Campus Club.
Continue reading "Weiss & LaVoi on Women’s Philanthropic Leadership Circle program, October 27" »
Nicole LaVoi will be part of a Sport & Morality Symposium at the annual Association of Moral Education conference held in November at the University of Notre Dame. Her talk is titled "Helping Create a Moral Climate on Youth Sport Sidelines: Reducing Parental Background Anger" and reflects her current work with the Minnesota Youth Sport Research Consortium (MNYSRC) pertaining to youth sport parents.
The Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport has created a blog to respond to Michael Sokolove's book, Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sport, which was released in 2008 along with a companion article that appeared in the May 11 issue of the New York Times Magazine.
The premise of the book asserts that “[the] immutable facts of anatomy and physiology� cause girls to incur significantly more sport injuries (e.g., ACL tears, concussions) than their male counterparts, resulting in what Sokolove terms a female “injury epidemic.� As a response to the underlying premise (and purported facts) of Warrior Girls, the Tucker Center felt it necessary to provide a scholarly critique from relevant academic disciplines, which included in its 2008 Fall Newsletter.
The Tucker Center's blog, Reacting to Warrior Girls, also contains those perspectives and invites comments and responses from the public.
Maureen Weiss, professor of Kinesiology and co-director of the Tucker Center, will join representative faculty of CIC universities (Committee on Institutional Cooperation) in visiting five universities in China (Beijing, Tianjin, Chengdu, Xian, Shanghai). The purpose of the trip, October 9-23, is to discover ways to collaborate on undergraduate and graduate programs, research projects, and study abroad opportunities. The delegation includes Kinesiology members from the University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Purdue University, Ohio State University, University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, and Penn State University.
Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, associate professor of Kinesiology, has been selected to be an Associate Editor for Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport (RQES). RQES is an interdisciplinary and the longest standing scholarly journal in Kinesiology (since 1930). Wiese-Bjornstal will serve a three-year term, 2008-2011, for the psychology section of the journal.
The 2007 Tucker Center Research Report: Developing Physically Active Girls (TCRR) continues to make an impact both nationally and internationally. The TCRR is cited in the National Coaching Report (2008), released in August by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE). The National Coaching Report is the only comprehensive document addressing both youth and interscholastic coaching education requirements in the United States. The TCRR was also featured in a presentation at the Promoting Equality in Sport - Toward Sydney 2010 Conference held in Mikkeli, Finland, last June. The presentation titled "Gender Issues and Coaching" was given by Chris Shelton from Smith College. Professor Shelton is an influential member of the International Working Group on Women and Sport (IWG).
Maureen Weiss, professor of kinesiology and co-director of the Tucker Center, recently co-authored two book chapters in Thelma Horn's (2008) textbook, Advances in Sport Psychology (3rd ed). Weiss and Tony Amorose published Motivational orientations and sport behavior, and she and co-authors Alan Smith and Cheryl Stuntz published Moral development in sport and physical activity: Theory, research, and intervention.
This fall, Tucker Center Associate Director Nicole LaVoi and Chelsey Rodd (Research Assistant) are writing a position paper in partnership with Team Up for Youth (www.teamupforyouth.org) on sports based youth development for underserved girls.
Associate Director of the Tucker Center Nicole LaVoi will deliver a keynote titled "Developing Physically Active Girls" to the AAUW Wisconsin River Falls chapter on September 16.
Associate Director of the Tucker Center Nicole LaVoi was invited to the annual meeting of the Minnesota State High School Coaches Association on October 4 to give a presentation titled "The Psychology of Coaching: Effective Motivational Strategies."
August 21, 2008 - Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, associate professor in Kinesiology, was elected to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports Science Advisory Board for 2009-2012. The board's activities include review and input on the long-standing President's Challenge program as well as many other initiatives related to physical activity and health across the lifespan. The board includes ten scholars who are selected because of their significant contributions to the research and science of physical activity, fitness, health, and sports.
Christine Brennan, former Tucker Center Distinguished Lecturer and well known sports journalist, will be posting her insights in a blog from the Beijing Olympics. Links to her blog and other Olympic work can be found at www.christinebrennan.com.