Recreation, Sport, and Tourism | Page 10 | College of Applied Health Sciences

RST alumna Simmons discusses the importance of giving back

July 25, 2024 | Sam Rink

*RST alumna Julie Simmons has joined AHS’ Board of Visitors (Photo provided)*

Pivotal. That is how Julie Simmons, chief operating officer and co-founder of Paragon Marketing Group, described her experience earning a master’s degree in Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The experience not only influenced her successful career in sports marketing, but also led her to where she is now, continually offering her generosity to the community that fostered her professional growth.

“When you truly learn and you really take to heart the lessons from your college experiences, I think you naturally want to give back to and support the institution that shaped you,” Simmons said.

Simmons has spent much of her career giving back to her alma mater, opening Paragon’s doors to current students in the form of mentorship and scholarships. The company sponsors four scholarships—one within Illinois’ own RST program as well as at Northern Illinois University, Illinois State University and DePaul University.

For years, Paragon has also facilitated a number of internships with students in RST, as well as from other area universities.

“We strive for diversity in our recruitment, but supporting institutions within Illinois is particularly important to us,” Simmons said. “And because many of these applicants are local, it reduces the financial burden of internships and makes these opportunities more accessible.”

Internships at Paragon offer hands-on experience with sports marketing, priming students to work on a wide variety of client projects. According to Simmons, interns are exposed to different areas of the business including strategy, event logistics and planning, providing them with a broad understanding of the industry.

“For us, it’s about providing interns with a positive, real-world experience that equips them with the knowledge they need to pursue a career in sports marketing,” she said.

But Simmons didn’t want to stop at simply providing internships and scholarships. She is now part of the College of Applied Health Sciences’ Board of Visitors, an advisory board of volunteer alumni who aim to assist and advocate for the college’s goals. Simmons was nominated to the board in January of 2024 by Jean Driscoll, the assistant dean for advancement, who said “her [Simmons’] experience, leadership, and passion for service make her a wonderful addition to the board. Her accomplishments are too numerous to name, and the BOV will be a beneficiary of her talents and ideas.”

“I’m truly excited and honored that Jean nominated me for this position,” Simmons said. “For me, this is another way to give back to a place where I experienced tremendous growth.”

Simmons not only has her own professional expertise and experience on the corporate side of scholarships to offer the board, but also her unique experience as a woman owner in a male-dominated industry.

“When I started out, I was often the only woman in a room full of men, and that’s still often the case,” she said. “One of the most important things I learned was the value of finding advocates for myself and other women. Building that support network is crucial. When I worked at the University of Illinois in the athletic environment, I was the only woman on the promotions team for quite a while. Despite that, everyone was welcoming and open, showing me that you can coexist and support each other.”

Those experiences of positive mentorship are a large part of Simmons’ motivation to join the Board of Visitors, but she has yet another personal connection that draws her toward supporting an institution of learning. Simmons, being the first person in her family to go to college, has a particular appreciation for the privilege of higher education, especially for going on to receive her master’s degree from Illinois.

“If I didn’t have others helping me along the way, great mentors to guide me and people encouraging me to expand my horizons, I wouldn’t be where I am today. That’s what I want to do, as well. I want to provide others with the information they need, whether it’s about the sports industry, being a woman business owner or the importance of education. It’s all about paying it forward.”

Simmons reflected on the impact of a positive learning environment on her career and how it has influenced her and her peers to continue working with the university, recalling her time working with Michael Raycraft, a clinical associate professor in RST, and Stephen Staples, a member of the board.

“That’s why it was pivotal for me, and that’s why I feel very passionate about trying to give something back to something that really helped me.”

When it comes to her future on the board, Simmons expressed her excitement to join the Nominating and Governance Committee.

“I’m excited to be able to bring my background and experience,” she said. “I look forward to contributing substance and value to our initiatives. I’m excited to get some more meat on the bones.”

Tags: alumni, College of Applied Health Sciences, Julia Simmons

Zou helps tourism industries build sustainable financing

March 06, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

In the final year of her doctoral studies, Zou took a class that connected marketing and the financing of park, recreation, and tourism services

Growing up in Guangzhou, China, Suiwen “Sharon” Zou quickly learned the importance of marketing a business.

Zou’s parents are entrepreneurs and they run their own factories.

“My parents, they are very savvy business people,” said Zou, an assistant professor in the Dept. of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois. “Growing up, I was educated by my parents that financial resources are an important means, if not the most important means, to an end. That got me very interested in business, in different business principles. So I always have that in mind.”

When Zou left China for the United States to pursue a graduate degree, she was focused on business. When she chose Texas A&M—in part to be near the person who became her husband—she gravitated toward an interest in marketing because of her advisor, whose research involved marketing.

“I was taking multiple classes, and specifically two classes that really got me to shape my research agenda. One was a class with the marketing department,” she said, “and the class discussed influential papers in psychology and behavioral economics. That started to plant the seeds.”

In the final year of her doctoral studies, she took a class that connected marketing and the financing of park, recreation, and tourism services. That’s when everything clicked for Zou, and she was hooked. Zou completed her Ph.D. at Texas A&M and then, with her husband urging her on, she applied for the job in the College of Applied Health Sciences at Illinois.

“I was not confident I would be able to get tenure here,” she said. “But my husband told me I have the support. So when I came (to Illinois for the job interview), there was this celebrity crush, you know? And then (RST Professor) Monika Stodolska picked me up from the airport. I could not believe it, because I was citing her work. I could not believe I was meeting people that I cited in my research!”

Now, she said, “I study how people have fun.”

Precisely, the overarching goal of Zou’s research is to improve tourism/leisure experience and community well-being by examining consumer’s perceptions and devising innovative marketing practices.

A recent study involved fee-based pricing at the Indiana Dunes National Park.

Zou said it was vital for public parks and other tourism industries to build a sustainable revenue model and not to solely rely on decreasing funding from state and federal sources.

The primary purpose of Zou’s study was to “understand visitors’ and surrounding community residents’ perceptions of Indiana Dunes National Park user fees to inform a fee structure that balances revenue generation and equitable access.”

During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Zou said, “parks saw explosions of people visiting.” While that was great for parks in terms of revenue, it also led to increasing operation costs at a time when government funding for these sites is being reduced.

“The specific goal is to find out how visitors see the park fees, and are they fair?,” Zou said.

The RST researcher said her preliminary findings indicate there was no consensus from study participants on what “fair” means, and that tension between fairness principles partly explains the longstanding controversy and debate on public land user fees.

Zou said tourism industries need to diversify their revenue streams because of declining funding from state and federal agencies.

“It’s like an investment,” she said. “You need to diversify in order to have that sustainability. You need to be more entrepreneurial with your funding sources. As for pricing user fees, how we can design a fee structure based on visitors’ diverse levels of perceptions and willingness-to-pay so that it is more acceptable to the visitors and we’ll get more revenue for the underfunded park services.”

Zou is also working with four local, rural communities—Galena, Savanna, Havana, and Grafton—to build up their tourism industries. Those communities have small populations—in the hundreds—but on the weekends, it grows ten-fold, in some cases.

“The goal of that project is to create a toolkit for a rural community that is underresourced to help to guide their tourism development initiatives,” she said. “We are close to finishing the toolkits.”

One thing is clear from speaking with Zou: she loves her work and her workplace.

“(RST Dept. Head) Carla Santos told me, ‘This is a huge playground. You will have a ton of support to do the research, and you will have a lot of playmates that will play with different toys. And it will be a great place to work.’ And it turns out to be really, really true.”’

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.

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Tags: Sharon Zou

CHAD symposium returns with thanks for pilot grants

March 03, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Pilot grants reignite Chad Symposium, fostering research collaboration and innovation

*KCH Associate Professor Naiman Khan’s presentation was titled “Role of Omega-3 Lipid Metabolites in Obesity and Cognitive Function” (Photo by Lisa Bralts)*

The first Center for Health, Aging, and Disability (CHAD) symposium since 2017 was a celebration of the research accomplished with the help of the Pilot Grant Program.

Three researchers from the College of Applied Health Sciences—Naiman Khan, an associate professor in Kinesiology and Community Health; Brian Monson, an assistant professor in Speech and Hearing Science, and Sharon Zou, an assistant professor in Recreation, Sport and Tourism, made a point of thanking CHAD’s grants for helping launch their studies.

Khan, whose presentation was titled “Role of Omega-3 Lipid Metabolites in Obesity and Cognitive Function,” said CHAD’s funding was vital to his work.

“CHAD was really helpful in us starting a new line of engagement of research,” he said.

CHAD director Jeff Woods, AHS’ associate dean for research, said to date, 38 pilot grants have been awarded since CHAD was launched in 2010, with $860,000 awarded to AHS researchers for pilot research. Woods described CHAD’s role as “work at the bookends of medicine … with the goal of improving people’s lives.”

“CHAD pilot grants are really important for junior faculty,” Zou said.

And the payoff has been well worth it, Woods said, citing the return on investment as approximately $16 in external funding to $1 in CHAD funding.

Zou’s presentation was titled “Exploring an Efficient and Equitable Entrance Fee for Public Lands: A Community-based investigation in the Indiana Dunes National Park.”

“I study how people have fun,” Zou said, explaining that it was vital for public parks and other tourism industries to build a sustainable revenue model and not to rely on decreasing funding from state and federal sources.

“The specific goal is to find out how visitors see the park fees, and are they fair?,” Zou said.

Khan’s presentation focused on how poor lifestyle choices can predict an early onset of dementia, noting that obesity worldwide has increased threefold since the 1980s. The KCH researcher said his research, in conjunction with Aditi Das of Georgia Tech, suggested that the a deficiencyin the hormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)—which has been reported to have beneficial effects on obesity, diabetes mellitus, and serum lipids in animals—was associated with individuals with a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 or higher, which is classified as obese.

“BMI is inversely connected to cognitive function,” Khan said. “Only in obese individuals do we see DHEA increase in circulation.” Khan said his preliminary results found:

Circulating Omega-3 metabolites were higher among persons with higher weight status and the levels were associated with degree of fat mass
Circulating metabolites inversely associated with cognitive function
Only observed among persons with overweight and obesity
Selectively associated with hippocampal function
Implications for memory function

Khan said his overarching goal was to “develop effective lifestyle approaches to improve cognitive function.”

SHS’ Monson discussed his study called “Capturing Prenatal Auditory Experience.”

“If there was a pregnant woman in this audience, that baby would be hearing my voice, and perhaps making judgments,” he said, drawing laughter from the gathering. “How do we know? Because full-term newborns come to the world with memories of what they’ve heard, including the mother’s voice.”

In utero, Monson explained, was a unique acoustic environment. When preterm infants are delivered, they are placed into incubators, which rapidly changed the sound profile, he said. The consequences of those changes include increased risk for sensorineural hearing loss, auditory neuropathy, language and speech developmental delays, auditory attention deficits and auditory processing disorder.

Monson’s study involved a group of pregnant women wearing a LENA listening device twice a week during the third trimester, while the device was placed into cribs of very preterm infants at Carle Foundation Hospital three times a week through their stay in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

“Fetuses are getting 2.5 hours a day of speech exposure vs. 32 minutes a day for very preterm infants,” he said. “It’s an alarming difference to me.”
NICU infants may incur a deficit of about 150 hours of speech exposure over the course of the preterm period, he explained.

One of the possible mitigation strategies for very preterm infants could be to provide meaningful targets (about three hours a day of speech exposure) to optimize auditory exposures in NICU settings.

“The maternal heartbeat is never turned off in utero,” he said. “The maternal heartbeat is never turned on in NICU.”

Following the CHAD Pilot Grant success stories, Wendy Rogers, the Shahid and Ann Carlson Khan Professor of Applied Health Sciences, talked about the work of Collaborations in Health, Aging, Research, & Technology (CHART).

CHART’s mission is to enable successful aging through:

Fundamental research
Advanced technology development
Education of researchers, developers, healthcare professionals, older adults
Guidance for policy decision-making
Translation of these efforts to positively affect the lives of older adults

CHART was the first research theme of the College of Applied Health Sciences and boasts the development of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home, an interdisciplinary research facility and simulated home environment that helps promote community engagement, industry partnerships, healthcare collaborations and faculty innovation.

Also part of the symposium was the introduction of a new AHS research theme called CARD (Collaborations in the Advancement of Research on Disability), led by KCH Associate Professor Laura Rice and KCH Professor John Kosciulek. CARD is focused on enhancing the health and quality of life of people with disabilities—through research that addresses critical gaps in disability-related knowledge and outreach that engages individuals with disabilities.

CARD’s short-term goals include:

Develop a collaborative working group
Develop communication strategies
Establish a steering committee of stakeholders
Develop and implement outreach and engagement events

Longer-term goals include:

Host a bi-annual research symposium
Develop a “toolkit” for UIUC faculty to support the performance of disability-related research in the Champaign-Urbana area
Respond to disability-related funding opportunities
Establish a competitive program to provide supplemental funding to support ongoing disability research among junior faculty
Host a seminar series with external experts
Establish a research training program for students registered with DRES interested in doing research
Support the development of new research registries and/or expansion of current registries

The first CARD meeting is set for March 22.

In kicking off the symposium, AHS Dean Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell said CHAD was “one of the biggest attractions” of her decision to come to Illinois and lead the college.

“When I thought about CHAD, I thought it’d be interesting to lead a college that has this kind of momentum to it, and I’ve been proven correct, year after year,” she said. “CHAD provides students with real-world engagement, and plays an absolutely critical role in their professional development.”

Woods agreed.

“We’re helping put the next generation of scientists into the field.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.

Tags: Brian Monson, CHAD, Chad Symposium, Jeff Woods, Naiman Khan, Sharon Zou, Wendy Bartlo

Q&A with RST student Emily Jordan

Oct. 22, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Vince Lara at the University of Illinois spoke with RST student Emily Jordan about her academic career, her Joan Braswell Scholarship, her work with the NJACC tournament and why she chose RST.

VINCE LARA: All right, so Emily, the first question I wanted to ask you is what made you choose the University of Illinois?

EMILY JORDAN: Well, originally, back in 2020, when I was about to graduate with my associate’s degree, I went to Danville Area Community College, where my associate’s is from. My original plan, before COVID hit, I went and visited three different schools, and the U of I was one of them just because I actually only live about 45 minutes away from campus, so I grew up coming over here coming the games and stuff all the time. So I was already kind of familiar with everything. I just wanted to see what the actual school was like.

So when I visited here originally, I was thinking I was going to major in communications because that’s what my associate’s is in. So when I did my visit over here, I actually spoke with a communications advisor, and I told her what I wanted to do and everything, and she actually redirected me to RST, which is where I’ll be graduating now. So that’s how it ended up. I realized that it was a good fit for me. I’m familiar with it over here. I could live at home, save money, and everything like that, so that ended up being why I came over here.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, and that answers the second question I had for you, which was why RST? And RST does have some similarities to communications. So when you were looking into RST at first, what really appealed to you there?

EMILY JORDAN: I guess I wanted something that was very people-based. I feel like I need communication with people all the time. I don’t see myself working at a sit down job. I need that interaction and everything. And so when I looked into RST more, after discussing different options with that communications advisor, I kind of figured out like, OK, these classes look really appealing to me, it all seems really enjoyable and something that could lead me to a really strong career, and it’s focusing on something that I really want to do, and more sport-based.

Communications is like a big bubble, so it’s really wide, and that’s why you can kind of go different routes with them. So that’s why I wasn’t sure what it was like over here, but I realized that RST encompassed a lot of things that I wanted to learn about and kind of navigate through as I got my bachelor’s degree.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, that’s a good point. And you talked about it being a big bubble, but it’s interesting that I noticed recently– part of the reason I’m having Emily on the podcast is that she won the Joan Braswell Scholarship at the RST scholarship ceremony, and as part of that social media post that we did over here, it mentioned that you wanted to be an athletic director. So I wonder how you made that leap from a communications associate’s degree to RST to now thinking about that as a future career?

EMILY JORDAN: Well, I took a class last semester, in the fall of 2021, and actually, that was my first semester physically on campus because my junior year, when I transferred here, everything was online. So when I came over here in person as a senior last semester, I was kind of worried and intimidated a little bit– a big school and everything. But once I got settled down in the classes and stuff, I felt comfortable in everything.

But one of the classes that I took was Dr. Welty-Peachey’s class. It’s RST 430, and it’s a Sport and Development class, and that was probably one of my favorite ones I’ve taken over here. It talks about how we can use sport as a tool to kind of help develop athletes and develop different parts of life as well as helping athletes be better in the sport that they want to be in.

And I think that kind of opened my eyes as to, OK, I think I have a passion for trying to fix the problems that are within sports because obviously, everything has issues and flaws, but I think that that’s where I found my passion was that I want to keep, especially, kids and youth and high school athletes involved in sports just because I know all the benefits that come from playing and participating in them.

So that’s kind of where I learned like, OK, I feel like, as an athletic director, I could help navigate athletes into the routes that they want to go in and steer them in the right direction and resolve those problems that are taking place as of today. And that’s kind of where I learned that being an AD might be a good fit for me.

VINCE LARA: I’m curious about what or who inspired your love of sports.

EMILY JORDAN: So I’m the youngest of my family. I have two older brothers, and I grew up watching them play sports. They played soccer, a little bit of football, a lot of basketball, track, baseball a little bit, so I just like grew up watching them play everything and, of course, as a younger little sister, you want to do everything that your older brothers or siblings are doing.

So that’s kind of how I got into playing T-ball as a little kid, and then that grew into softball, and then I played soccer just like they did and ended up playing school volleyball, and I ran a little bit of track and played basketball like them. So that’s kind of where it stemmed from. I mentioned before, too, we would always as a family come over to the U of I and watch basketball games and football games. So I kind of just grew up playing them and being around them all the time. We talk about it all the time still today. So that’s kind of where that all stems from.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, that makes sense. And recently, you were an announcer for the Men’s National Junior College Athletic Association Division II basketball tournament. How did that come about? Did you express interest? Did someone seek you out? Tell me how that came together.

EMILY JORDAN: When I was at Danville Area Community College, I took some college classes, like dual credit classes, in high school, so I was already familiar with DACC. And then when I graduated high school, that’s where I finished my associates at for that remaining one year. And one of the classes I took was like a media production class, and the assistant professor I had, her named Laura Hensgen, and she’s kind of in charge of the media department there and everything, and DACC has hosted that tournament, the championship portion of the tournament for– I think it’s been 29 years, I believe. So they’re very familiar with it and everything.

So they have broadcasters and the radio and the livestream come out and everything, and there was myself and another student in her class at the time that was interested in media broadcasting, media stuff, sports in general, and she just asked us if we would be interested in doing it, if that would be a good opportunity to expand our horizons a little bit and get us some experience and everything. So I’m not going to lie, I was a little intimidated just because it’s a big setting and everything, but myself and the other student ended up doing it that first year of 2020.

But then, of course, COVID happened, so that season got cut short. And then when I actually came over here to the U of I my junior year, she asked me to come back, even though I wasn’t a student at DACC anymore. She asked me to come back and commentate again, and so I did it with that student there that following year, as well as I did it with my dad too. So it was really cool to do it, come back and do it, and do it for a full season because I didn’t get that opportunity before. But that’s kind of how it all got started and everything.

VINCE LARA: You said you did it with your dad. Is your dad a broadcaster?

EMILY JORDAN: Yeah, so I live over in Vermilion County, and one of the radio stations, he will do some high school basketball games here and there. And they’ve asked him to do that tournament, the NJCAA tournament there, so he did that one with me. We’ve actually called some of the Vermilion County high school basketball tournament games together too, so it’s been really fun to have that experience with my dad too because, obviously, that doesn’t come around too often, but it was really a lot of fun to do it with him as well as with that teacher at DACC and the other student at DACC.

VINCE LARA: Sure, and DACC being, of course, Danville Area Community College, just for our listeners’ context there. So the obvious next question to you is why not pursue sports media because it seems like you’re really passionate about it and your dad is involved, and so why not go that way?

EMILY JORDAN: Well, I think it goes back to that class that I took last semester. I think that the media world obviously is a huge part of today’s society and how we function and everything, how we get our information, and spread information, and stuff like that. I think it’s a super unique job. Originally, I wanted to do social media or marketing for a team of some sort. That was my original thought.

But I think I was passionate about it too, and broadcasting I enjoy and everything, but I think that where my– I want to get like a lot of fulfillment out of what I do, so I think that helping athletes in some way, making sure they stay involved in sports and, like I said, fixing the issues that are in the systems right now, I think those are really important so we can see the same participation levels throughout time and everything.

And I feel like I’ll get the most fulfillment out of doing something like that versus doing a sports media type job, I would say, just because that I know I’d be helping more people in that way. Not that sports media, obviously, is any– isn’t bad or anything, but I just think I would get more fulfillment out of helping athletes and stuff like that.

VINCE LARA: Sure. Have you had a chance at all to spend any time with Josh Whitman or kind of shadow him?

EMILY JORDAN: No, but I’m going to be doing my internship as part of– I’m not sure if you know, but the RST internship we have to do as part of our degree work requirement– this summer, I will be doing it under the athletic director and the media productions person Laura as I mentioned before. I’ll be working under them this summer at DACC as well. So that’ll be, I think, a really good interesting time for me and kind of allow me to see what it’s like being an AD, so I’m really looking forward to that as well.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, that’s terrific. And I think to wrap up I’d like to just ask, what would you tell other students who may be in a similar situation that you were at the end of your associate’s degree about RST, and how would you recommend the program to them?

EMILY JORDAN: I would say, when I was getting ready to transfer and I was looking at the schools I was looking at, the U of I seems massive. I mean, that was my initial thought, and what I told my parents and everything, but there’s 50,000 to 60,000 kids that come here, and it just seems so big and everything.

But when I actually came here and visited campus and stuff and saw that it’s like you know broken down into colleges and then your major and everything, I think that it helped it be more appealing to me, and also made me feel more at ease and comfortable with coming here, especially since it is so big. But in all honesty, I still feel like I’m kind of going to a community college. I’m not traveling across campus for classes or sitting in super big classes with 100 to 200 kids or anything like that. I really feel comfortable here knowing that I’m in the right major, and then with RST, I think that you’re going to get a lot of experiences out of being in that major.

It’s not necessarily a lot of book work. Obviously, there’s things you take from text and apply it to real life, but I think it’s more real life scenarios that you learn hands-on and in the classroom that can help you further on in your career. So I think that’s why it was so eye-opening for me and really attractive to me to come to RST because I felt that I would get the most out of majoring in this major. So it just felt like that. It felt comfortable, it felt right, and it just, like I said, would be an awesome experience for anyone, I think, who’s interested in this kind of work.

Tags: A Few Minutes With, Emily Jordan, Podcast

RST 180 ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ trip for students

June 20, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

As much as the trip is about learning the logistics and operations of iconic RST sites, it is also an epic road trip

Students finished up the RST 180 Hall of Fame tour with a stop at the Pro Football Hall of Fame and then took in the sights of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from the brick finish line before returning home in Champaign!

RST 180 has a rather dry course title: Professional Applications. But for the students who take the class, it is anything but.

RST 180, which returned in 2022 after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19, is a three-credit course that concludes with a 12-day tour of recreation, sport and tourism-related destinations in Indiana, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. This year’s trip included stops in sites such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Niagara Falls, the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Olympic training site in Lake Placid, the site of Woodstock in Bethel, N.Y., the 9/11 Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., and the Ohio State Reformatory, the site of the movie “The Shawshank Redemption.”

On May 23, more than two dozen students, along with RST Clinical Associate Professor Mike Raycraft, boarded a bus and set out from the University of Illinois campus on their way east.

As much as the trip is about learning the logistics and operations of iconic RST sites, it is also an epic road trip—complete with a five-hour delay due to a bus breakdown.

“My favorite part of the trip was meeting some of the best people and friends that I have ever met,” said rising sophomore Matthew Wargo. “From the beginning, we had to hang out with each other while we waited 5-plus hours for a new bus, and those hours really helped us to bond as a group before we embarked on the bus journey.”

Rising sophomore Nicole Dudek agreed.

“My favorite part of the trip was bonding with all my classmates and making lifelong friendships,” she said. “One instance that sticks out to me is when we all went on a cruise around Glimmerglass Lake in Cooperstown [upstate New York]. We had a free day to spend however we liked, but all of us chose to spend it with each other. It was really a moment where we bonded despite being from different walks of life.”

Rising senior Olivia Butters was another student on the trip. Butters is studying business management and is minoring in RST, with an emphasis on Sports Management. Ideally, she would like to work in a collegiate athletics department in operations or facility management,and this type of trip allows her to see those operations up close.

Butters said she was especially excited to meet with Mark Thomas—the recently retired Western District Director for State Parks in New York—whose role included oversight of Niagara Falls.

“I was very excited to hear about his experience running such a large state park,” Butters said. “He had so much knowledge and gave us such a great experience at the Falls.”

Dudek, who plans to pursue a career in outdoor recreation/tourism, was also excited to meet with Thomas, but the most important visit to her was unexpected.

“Cooperstown ended up being the site that was most significant to me, which initially came as a surprise,” she said. “Going into the trip all I knew the town for was the Baseball Hall of Fame, which I was interested in but didn’t expect to fawn over. It ended up being two of my favorite days of the trip.”

Visiting new places and spaces is fun for the students, but they also understand the importance of the trip, in terms of their futures.

“I wanted to explore what career options there were in the field, as well as network with professionals across the country,” Dudek said.

As much as the journey provided students and future professionals with lifelong benefits—especially crucial experience that will inform their future careers—it also included something unique.

“My favorite part of the trip was meeting everyone. I got onto the bus on the first day only knowing two people in the class, and by the last day I could easily call each person on the bus a friend,” Butters said. “I couldn’t say no to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Matthew Wargo agreed.

“We all had a great time together—even now, a few weeks after the trip ended, we are already making plans to hang out with each other in the fall and later this summer,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade the friends I made on this trip for anything in the world.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.

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Tags: Mike Raycraft, RST180

Alumni Spotlight—Kelsey Beccue

Alumni of the College of Applied Health Sciences have myriad career options thanks to the tremendous diversity of programs. We periodically will put the spotlight on an alum to find out what they’re doing now, what experiences they had and what AHS means to them. This week, we talk to Kelsey Beccue, an RST alum who is development manager for the Urbana Park District.

Q: Why did you pick AHS?

A: Choosing AHS was primarily a function of it being the home of my preferred major—Recreation, Sport, and Tourism.

Q: Which professors had the most impact on you?

A: This is kind of a toughie, but I’ll go with Professor (Cindy) Wachter. I was in the second semester of my sophomore year and still undecided. I had registered for a host of classes, attended them all my first week and promptly dropped them and registered for new ones. One of the classes I registered for was an Intro to Recreation, Sport, and Tourism class taught by Professor Wachter, and I LOVED IT! Once I was in there, I felt like I finally had some sense of direction and selected RST as my area of study. I still had some figuring out to do career-wise, but was finally taking classes that resonated with me.

Q: What course did you most enjoy?

A: I can’t remember the official course title anymore, but I did take a recreation programming class with Lori Kay Paden that was outstanding, and a great “real world” type of experience.

Q: Did you enter AHS knowing your career path, or did AHS help you decide?

A: I definitely did not know my career path when I headed into AHS, but with help from my RST advisor, I got a push in the right direction. When I first came into RST, I thought I wanted a concentration in Tourism Management, but after working through things with my advisor, it became quite obvious that Recreation Management was the right direction for me, and that set me on the course that brought me to where I am today.

Q: Did your AHS experience lead to your current job?

A: Yes—thanks required internship!

Q: What is your current job?

A: I am currently the Development Manager at the Urbana Park District.

Q: What was your favorite on-campus experience?

A: I worked in the concessions division of the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics during college, and getting the opportunity to work the different sporting events was really cool. I attended a lot of sporting events I might not have attended otherwise. The football game days were fun, too. Long, but fun—great crew to work with! Seeing Sara Bareilles perform at Foellinger with some of my best pals ranks highly, too!

Q: What would you say to recommend AHS to a prospective student?

A: I’d say that it’s a great college—it’s smaller so you don’t get lost in the crowd as much, and the faculty and advisors are great!

RST 180 returns with new locations and funding

May 16, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

RST 180 packs 20 field trips into one, two-week-long bus ride

*RST 180 examines elements of administration, programming, and facility planning and management to high profile recreation, sport, and tourism destinations.*

RST 180, a class that takes students on a tour of some of the country’s best-known sports and tourism sites, returns in 2022 after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19. But this year’s iteration has some new wrinkles: a visit to Shawshank prison, and funding for the two dozen students-turned-tourists.

The brainchild of Recreation, Sport and Tourism clinical associate professor Mike Raycraft, RST 180 packs 20 field trips into one, two-week-long bus ride. The course, in its fourth year, is part of the RST curriculum at Illinois, where students learn how to deliver a variety of leisure experiences to different populations. This can include anything from managing a professional sports team to running a historical museum to overseeing a state park facility.

The trip runs from May 23 to June 3, with 26 students—half of them freshmen—riding the bus with Raycraft. The group sets out from Champaign and winds through cities such as Cleveland, Cooperstown, N.Y., Princeton, N.J., Philadelphia, Canton, Ohio and Indianapolis, and sites such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Niagara Falls, the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Olympic training site in Lake Placid, the site of Woodstock in Bethel, N.Y., the 9/11 Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., and the Ohio State Reformatory, the site of the movie the “Shawshank Redemption.”

In addition to new places to visit such as the Ohio State Reformatory and the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, this year’s RST 180 has another new feature: donations to offset student costs. The trip costs about $2,100 per student for food and lodging.

The Orange Krush Foundation, a section of the Registered Student Organization Illini Pride, gave a grant of $6,300 to RST 180. Kilton Rauman, a member of the Orange Krush executive committee, said the Orange Krush Foundation thought RST 180 was “a valuable thing to contribute to.”

“I thought that it was a really cool program giving students the opportunity to have those real world experiences,” Rauman said. “And going on a trip that could have such a long lasting impact. I thought that was a good place to support education in the university with something so hands-on.”

The Orange Krush Foundation builds its funding base with proceeds from student basketball and football tickets, Rauman said. The grant from Orange Krush came too late for this year’s trip, but in 2023, three students will get a full free ride.

“I would hate for someone else to miss out because they felt the cost was out of their price range, or something they couldn’t manage,” said Rauman, who was supposed to be on the tour in 2020 before COVID-19 hit. “So I’m happy that three students will be able to know that their trip is safely funded, and that’s not something they have to stress over.”

RST alum Carmen Rossi also made a generous donation to help RST students. The entrepreneur pledged $250,000 over a five-year period to the RST Domestic Site Tour Fund that will go toward paying part of students’ costs for RST 180.

“I live in the community,” Rossi said, explaining his motivation for the donation. “And the community has been amazing. I’m so absolutely fortunate for being able to have experienced the degree of success as a product of the community. And the community is representative of so many different cogs in so many different organizations.”

The donations from Rossi and Illini Pride will be used for future trips and as an enticement for students to join the RST degree program, Raycraft said.

“What I’m hoping is it triggers our alumni to engage,” he said.

Mark Thomas, the now-retired Western District Director for State Parks in New York—which included oversight of Niagara Falls—said you can’t replicate in a classroom what you learn on this trip.

“This class allows the students access to top-level professionals and facilities in recreation sport and tourism venues around the Northeast and North Central United States,” said Thomas, now an adjunct faculty member at Illinois. “And this is rare access that students that might just be going through any program without that access at the level that Mike with his connections and the arrangements in this class that have been set up for these students. They get in the door to places and really see inner workings and talk with people who are boots-on-the-ground people in the profession.”

In addition to Niagara Falls, other highlights included Gettysburg Battlefield and Saratoga Springs, Flight 93 National Memorial, Progressive and First Energy Fields (home to the Cleveland Indians and Browns), the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center, NCAA Headquarters, and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Thomas said he has been impressed with questions students ask, and the passion they have.

“They’re very motivated to learn,” he said. “They want to draw the most out of the experience. They asked very good questions about Niagara, but they also asked questions about the other parks that I had and what they were like. They are able to glean a lot of information, but then synthesize it on the fly.”

Thomas, who retired shortly after the 2019 tour—the last one before 2022 because of COVID—gives all the credit to Raycraft, whom he met and got to know because of this class.

“When you see the actual operations and facilities on the ground and the variety of them that Mike has scheduled in all three of those arenas, it gives these students a real good, deep look in. And you can’t get that from sitting in a classroom,” he said.

Thomas knows RST 180 can also help shape careers.

“It helps them in several ways. One is, it gives them a perspective of what kinds of work might be available to them and what kind of organizations when they graduate from the program. And I think that’s a real big deal for students. And second of all, it helps them kind of formulate does this track feel right to me, is this a better track for me.”

For Rauman, the RST 180 tour is personal.

“I had a solid foundation knowledge about the trip, because I was signed up to go on it my freshman year, prior to it being canceled by COVID. So I kind of knew a lot of what it entailed, and I did get some details from some class of 2022 classmates. And they’ve talked about how cool the Niagara Falls experience was, and how valuable it was to see not just sporting venues, but also you went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you kind of saw how that operated. The variety of experiences they talked about being valuable, and then just networking, being on a bus with all those people, you can really get a lot closer with them.”

This unique field exploration journey can provide our students and future professionals with lifelong benefits, giving them crucial experience as they move into their professional fields. Please consider making a donation to support this unique student experience: If you’d like to support the fund for the RST 180 Travel Scholarship Fund, please visit this website and fill out the form.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.

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Tags: Mike Raycraft, RST 180

2022 AHS Distinguished Lecturer Series—Dr. Ingrid E. Schneider

April 13, 2022 | AHS Staff

Watch Ingrid Schneider’s talk on COVID-constrained leisure.

Dr. Ingrid E. Schneider, Ph.D.
Professor, University of Minnesota
“Wrangling the waves: Coping with COVID-Constrained Leisure and its Impacts on Leisure-Time Physical Activity”
Recorded Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Full video

Tags: Distinguished Lecture Series, Ingrid Schneider

Distinguished Lecturer: Green Spaces are Essential to Good Health

April 07, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

*The use of green spaces such as parks and trails has increased through the ebbs and flows of COVID-19 (Stock image)*

Research has shown that leisure time physical activity in outdoor spaces has more positive health benefits than physical activity done indoors. Fully one-third of the U.S. population, however, has no access to green spaces, nor to the associated health benefits.

These were among the findings shared during the 2022 AHS Distinguished Lecturer presentation given by Dr. Ingrid Schneider, professor and eminent scholar of recreation and tourism in the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Minnesota.

Leisure time physical activity increases the immune response to viral respiratory infections. Dr. Schneider cited a study of 60,000 South Africans which found that those who exercised more had fewer hospitalizations with COVID, fewer intensive care admissions, less frequently required ventilators, and less frequently died.

“Nearly a decade ago, the America Public Health Association prioritized access to green spaces, emphasizing the need for safe, walkable communities and green spaces to promote an active lifestyle across the lifespan,” she said.

While the use of green spaces such as parks and trails has increased through the ebbs and flows of COVID-19, the ongoing pandemic also served to accentuate and compound issues of inequality.

“Communities of lower socioeconomic status and minority communities have less access to green spaces and tend to have lower quality parks,” Dr. Schneider said. “People of color are overrepresented in neighborhoods with lack of access to green space and live further from safe green space.”

The COVID pandemic has heightened awareness that racism is a public health threat. Prior to the pandemic, local officials viewed parks and recreation spending as discretionary. Those calling for green space have never been louder, more diverse, or more perfectly positioned, Dr. Schneider said.

“Collective planning and policy can amplify those voices for green spaces as critical infrastructure and contributors to health and well-being,” she said. “We can’t wait another decade, we can’t wait another year, we really can’t wait another day to address the inequities in systemic health.”

The severity of COVID’s impact on black communities was a predictable result of structural and social reality. Cities cannot be fixed, Dr. Schneider said, if we don’t insist on dismantling racial, economic, and environmental inequities.

“Green space is an essential part of healthy, resilient, and vibrant communities,” she said. “Given the evidence of the health benefits of green space, withholding access to them for a third of U.S. residents is simply unacceptable and unjust.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.

Tags: Distinguished Lecture Series, Ingrid Schneider

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Q: Why did you pick AHS?

Q: Which professors had the most impact on you?

Q: What course did you most enjoy?

Q: Did you enter AHS knowing your career path, or did AHS help you decide?

Q: Did your AHS experience lead to your current job?

Q: What is your current job?

Q: What was your favorite on-campus experience?

Q: What would you say to recommend AHS to a prospective student?

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