After two years of planning, the School of Kinesiology has rolled out a new concentration to meet the growing demand for educators and consultants in physical fitness and wellness.
The Health and Fitness major is built around a core 49 credits that teach the fundamentals of wellness and physical training and then branches out to two distinct tracks: physical education and health and fitness leadership.
The physical education track prepares students for a teaching certification in physical education, while the research-based health and fitness leadership track prepares students for jobs in which they will promote individual and community health. With rising health-care costs, many companies are looking for individuals with similar backgrounds to lead wellness programs that reduce medical expenditures.
Both tracks prepare students for national certification tests for personal trainers and other fitness professionals, and both guarantee an internship to get real-world experience and practice skills learned in the classroom.
Kinesiology Dean Ron Zernicke said the concentration was developed for three reasons: to reorient the school’s priorities to focus on health, wellness and physical activity and to latch on to the wide variety of work being done throughout the University regarding physical inactivity.
“What we tried to do was to figure what were the resources we have within the school and then how do we collaborate across schools to give students within our school, and others, the best opportunities,” Zernicke said, adding that alumni have encouraged the school to add health and fitness elements to the curriculum.
Zernicke said the Bureau of Labor predicts employment of health educators will grow 18 percent by 2018.
“This is now getting into the community; this is getting into the businesses; this is getting into the corporation,” Zernicke said. “The opportunities were out there and we didn’t see that we were filling those as best we could given the resources we do have.”
Although the inaugural class only has 15 students, Pat Van Volkinburg, associate dean for academic programs of the School of Kinesiology, said the concentration will likely grow dramatically in the coming years.
“I am getting lots of e-mails and lots of phone calls requesting meetings with students who want to talk about what it would take to become a student in that major,” Van Volkinburg said.
However, since the School of Kinesiology only accepts about 20 percent of its applicants, getting into the school — and thus the concentration — could be a challenge.
“I prefer to have that much higher because I would like to service a lot more students, but there are limited capacities, so it is becoming more and more competitive in terms of the quality of students were are having here, which is great on one hand,” Zernicke said. “It is just that there are a lot people who are interested and would like to come to the school.”