Get to Know: Miki Sato, assistant professor in Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the College of Applied Health Sciences
Miki Sato (Photo provided)
Miki Sato joined the College of Applied Health Sciences in 2020, after six years at James Madison University.
How would you describe your primary research interests?
My primary line of research focuses on exploring how and why engagement in sport-related consumption activities, such as sport participation and sport spectatorship, can contribute to improved health, health-related behaviors, and overall well-being.
I have conducted research in various sport settings, including participatory sport events (e.g., running events, walking events), fitness clubs, spectator sport events, and the Olympic Games.
What are you working on right now?
I am involved in research projects that examine the health benefits of sport participation and park and recreational facility availability within communities. Additionally, we are working on projects that explore the distinct roles of various sport participation locations, such as parks, fitness clubs, and community recreation centers, in promoting sport participation behaviors and enhancing well-being.
Regarding sport spectatorship, we are conducting projects that examine how engagement in professional sporting events, both through behavioral live spectating and psychological identification with professional sport teams, is associated with consumer well-being. We recently published a paper that provides evidence supporting sport spectatorship as a form of experiential consumption that fosters happiness among sport fans.
What’s a fun fact you’d like to share about yourself? What do you like to do in your free time?
I am a big fan of track and field and long-distance running. One of my childhood idols was Carl Lewis, who won nine Olympic gold medals in sprint and long-jump events. I am also a recreational runner.
Since moving to Illinois, I have participated in the Illinois Marathon’s 10k race twice. The event was incredibly well-organized, and I recommend it to runners of all levels, from novices to experienced athletes!
Black women mention social support as an important consideration for them to be physically active
With roots in Pennsylvania, an upbringing in Connecticut and newly planted ideas in Champaign, freshly minted Ph.D. recipient Imani Canton sees community gardening as a way to improve health equity.
Canton graduated with her doctorate in kinesiology in May, which involved successfully defending her dissertation, entitled “Tending to Our Roots to Increase Our Wellness (TRIOWell): A Community Gardening Intervention.” Canton’s dissertation revolves around a program designed to expand physical and mental health among Black women through community gardening programs, alongside researching health disparities among middle-aged Black women and how to combat them.
“Community gardening addresses multiple dimensions of health,” Canton said. “It is a type of physical activity, which we know can improve physical and mental health, and by working in a community garden, it provides opportunities to improve social health.”
Canton’s story begins at Spelman College, an all-women’s historically Black university in Georgia. But while applying to and completing her undergraduate degree, the college removed all NCAA sports due to the lack of student participation, due to disproportionate health disparities among Black women.
Instead of continuing NCAA sports, the college instead invested in a campus-wide health initiative, “Wellness Revolution,” that included a new gymnasium, as well as policy changes to the physical education curriculum. This eventually kickstarted Canton’s interest in investigating health trends among Black women.
“That actually had been my first-time hearing that, and then it just kind of clicked to me when people say that racism is pervasive that it is in all types of systems,” Canton said. “Now I see how it’s within a health system, too. Fast forward to University of Illinois. I knew that I wanted to design physical activity programs specifically for African-American women.”
Canton began her stint at Illinois by enrolling in a B.S./Ph.D. in Kinesiology program in the College of Applied Health Sciences. Working with an advisor, Canton narrowed her research concentration to wellness in Black communities.
Her journey to a Ph.D. was not an easy one, though. Canton worked with multiple advisors, looking for the best fit within AHS.
During her research, Canton found out that Black women prefer walking as their preferred method of exercise. The reasoning—access to equipment—or lack of it—in Black communities.
“[The] lack of gym access due to racism and historical redlining leaving Black communities disproportionately in areas with less access to a built environment, which includes gyms and also green spaces, like gardens,” Canton said.
Gardening is a lower intensity physical activity compared to traditional forms of exercises such as running and weightlifting, and thus it may encourage those who have health concerns as a barrier to engage in physical activity to want to be physically active, she said.
And, according to Canton, research shows that Black women mention social support as an important consideration for them to be physically active and this is likely due to collectivism being a salient component of Black American culture.
So, Canton combined the two activities—gardening and social support within the community—which is where the concept of community gardening programs came to life.
“Those who have higher levels of social support, typically, are more likely to participate in physical activity,” Canton said. “And you know, it makes sense because if you see your friend working out or doing some kind of physical activity, or if you have someone to do it with, you might be more encouraged to do it yourself.”
As far as the garden, Canton’s choice was the Randolph Street Community Garden, which is planted, cultivated and loved within the Champaign community. The Randolph Street Community Garden was started by another Illinois Ph.D. student as a small, urban planning project, which evolved into a full-scale garden that now has around 65 beds.
During her Ph.D. program, Canton applied for a community grant, Building Beyond the Barriers, alongside Dawn Blackman, the Randolph Street Community Garden stewardess, to bridge the gap between academic and community, and continue the programs at the garden. With that funding, the garden can continue to bloom.
After tending to her planted ideas for six years, Canton is ready to let them flourish and grow within Champaign, and now, she is ready to return home to Connecticut, where she will attend the Yale School of Public Health, pursuing an advanced professional Master of Public Health in Applied Biostatistics and Epidemiology. When she completes that program, she will begin her fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland.
Canton made many discoveries about her research and herself during her doctoral studies. But one of the first ones had perhaps the biggest impact on her. She found out that in the late 1800s, Anita J. Turner was the first Black woman physical education instructor and later considered one of the pioneers of that field. That helped Canton find her path.
“You see black women doing this, then you think that OK, ‘I can do this myself, too,’ and just kind of build pride around that,” Canton said. “I wanted us to connect to our roots, roots in the garden and then our cultural roots.”
Hernández-Saavedra in 2024 received a $30,000 grant from the Center on Health, Aging and Disability, or CHAD, to study muscle memory. He and his team decided to focus on mice.
“Mice love running. They run like five to 10 kilometers [about 3-6 miles] per night, so a lot. What our studies are trying to do is trying to leverage the fact that mice love running and try to understand whether we can make them healthier,” Hernández-Saavedra said.
The grant Hernández-Saavedra received was part of the CHAD Pilot Grant Program. That program was enabled to support innovative, groundbreaking interdisciplinary research aimed at advancing the understanding of health and wellness, aging disability and the maintenance of a high quality of life.
According to Hernández-Saavedra, in the initial training phase, mice are trained for four weeks. With this group, researchers try to answer the question of how muscle memory is established.
In the second phase, mice train, followed by a detraining period where all mice are sedentary. This group tackles the question of whether the muscle memory disappears after exercise cessation.
In the final training phase, mice are trained, detrained, and once again trained. This cohort answers the question of how prior muscle memory is remembered and recalled by a second exercise training bout, Hernández-Saavedra said.
“We’re limited by doing mouse work, but I think it’s very interesting because we don’t really know how muscle memory works,” he said. “The grant that we received is to study how each cell within the muscle stores the memory and contributes to a better outcome.”
Hernández-Saavedra, born and raised in Mexico, came to the U.S. in 2013 to pursue a Ph.D. at Illinois after receiving his B.S. from the Autonomous University of Queretaro, Mexico. After his Ph.D., he went to The Ohio State University as a postdoctoral fellow in 2018 and returned to Illinois to become a faculty member in 2021.
Hernández-Saavedra’s research focuses on the beneficial effects of exercise to understand the adaptations in key metabolites and lipids in health and disease, the epigenetic mechanisms associated exercise that improve metabolism and bioenergetics, and the transgenerational effect of sedentarism and exercise on metabolism and cardiac function.
In his post-doctorate work at Ohio State, Hernández-Saavedra studied how maternal obesity can affect the health of babies. Now at Illinois, Hernández-Saavedra is more focused on studying exercise memory, which is understanding whether the body remembers it ever exercised.
“What our lab is trying to understand is whether our bodies remember prior exercise. For example, if you worked out, in the past, you’ve gone to the gym, but then you don’t go anymore. Four months later, you go back to the gym,” Hernández-Saavedra said. “Do we start from scratch? Do we start from a middle point? Or do they just remember all that and recover really fast to make it stronger, faster and better.”
Hernández-Saavedra explained that his lab studies how the tissue, the muscle, or the liver or the heart, remember prior exercise and how they store information in an epigenetic memory.
“Our research aims to reveal how exercise shapes muscle memory, providing strategies to combat age-related muscle decline, enhance metabolic health and maintain health and mobility as we age,” Hernández-Saavedra said.
For their studies, various groups of mice undergo different exercise training cycles. Some constantly work out, other groups do, but then stop and others workout, stop, and resume again.
“We use a very interesting strategy,” said Hernández-Saavedra, who credited his students Hank Huang and Clay Weidenhamer for their “tireless” work on the project. “The mice love to work out so we train them. Then we have another group where we train those mice, and then we remove the wheel. And then we see whether the mice, their tissues, specifically the muscle, whether they forget that they ever ran in a wheel.
“They love getting on the wheel,” Hernandez-Saavedra said about the mice. “They love their exercise. And so maybe we should try to be like them a little bit.”
Six-time weightlifing champion Andy Askow is pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois (Photo provided)
To anyone who knows Andy Askow, the marrying of his personal interests and research interests is no surprise.
The Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Health and Kinesiology is a six-time national powerlifting champion. He’s also planning to defend his dissertation in the fall and graduate from the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in December.
Askow’s dissertation is focused on a randomized controlled trial aiming to understand the role of dietary protein distribution throughout the day and dietary protein source on daily muscle protein synthetic rates throughout a nine-day intervention.
“We can’t look at nutrition without working with the exercise component as well,” said Askow, whose advisor is HK Associate Professor Nick Burd. “Certainly, it cradles a holistic approach to research and setting up to research and setting up the experiments.”
Askow came to Illinois in 2019 after completing his master’s degree in exercise physiology and sport science at Texas Christian University. Before that, he completed his bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and exercise science at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
While at TCU, Askow—a Wisconsin native—came to Illinois for the summer to work as a research associate. During that time, he found he wanted to return to the Midwest for his Ph.D., and found a perfect fit in Burd’s Nutrition and Exercise Performance Group.
“We have an interest in trying to identify innovative approaches to promote muscle health across the lifespan,” Askow said. “And every day is complete chaos. It’s really inconsistent, but it’s a fun inconsistent. It doesn’t get stale, because nothing’s ever the same.”
Burd agreed.
“It’s always exciting,” Burd said. “Andy and I were just sitting here for a few hours this morning, trying to figure out some data sets. And I literally told him, ‘This is where you earned your Ph.D.’ It’s fun, being a critical thinker, and being in the trenches in terms of answering the questions, generating that cutting edge information and then sharing it with other people.”
In addition to carrying his course load and his workouts, Askow has also made time for awards. He’s won four scholarships, most recently the Laura J. Huelster Award in spring 2024.
“Being a Ph.D. student, there aren’t a lot of opportunities for external confirmation that you’re doing things the right way. Winning these awards has been a nice reminder that hard work pays off and that I’m on the right path.”
As for future plans, Askow has been collaborating with Dr. Andrew Jagim, the director of Sports Medicine Research at the Mayo Clinic in Wisconsin, and hopes to return there after graduation.
As much mentorship as he offers, Burd knows that students, especially doctoral students, have to be self-starters.
“I’m just there to help them stay afloat and steer them in the right direction, but they’re really doing it on their own,” Burd said. “They’re just very self-driven. I’m there to help create a positive learning environment for him and help culture those passions and foster those passions.”
“The people that have been here have been some of my closest friends and collaborators,” Askow said. “I think you can’t get through a Ph.D. without having a good group around you or, it’s certainly not going to be very nice if you try.”
With her unique scholarly background, Synthia Sydnor has provided a humanities-trained perspective within the department for three decades
Retired Health and Kinesiology Associate Professor Synthia Sydnor smiles outside of the Siebel Center for Design. (Photo by Ethan Simmons)
As a wandering graduate student, Synthia Sydnor used to take cross-country road trips while she worked on her Ph.D. at Penn State University.
In 1986, an opportunity came calling from the College of Applied Life Sciences at the University of Illinois: an opening for a faculty position to study and interpret sport and play.
The role seemed a perfect match for Sydnor—a budding scholar in the cultural-historical analysis of sport—but this Midwestern setting seemed unappealing.
Driving through the “barren” winter landscape of Illinois, “we always said, ‘this is the last place on earth we will ever live,’” Sydnor said.
Two years later, the job was still open, so Sydnor applied to at least get some interview experience. To her surprise, Illinois hired her. Sydnor came to adore the university as well as Illinois’ prairies and skies, and she would retire from the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health in spring 2024, 36 years later.
Sydnor has witnessed profound changes in her discipline and in the University of Illinois, from researching and writing in a basically pre-digital academic environment to teaching a 750-student online class before COVID-19 had even arrived. (Leading KIN 142: “Contemporary Issues in Sport” virtually felt like “running a corporation,” she said.)
With her unique scholarly background—she held appointments in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and Illinois Global Institute—Sydnor has provided a humanities-trained perspective within the department for three decades.
“What is sport? Why do we attach all these invented things to it, like ‘masculinity’, ‘teamwork,’ and lately, ‘peace’ and ‘development?’” Sydnor said. “I’ve tried with students and the research I’ve contributed to think of sport as a serious object of knowledge, not just frills and fun.”
In retirement, Sydnor is spending time with family while staying connected to her academic home, collaborating with several younger faculty across the department and mining her own discipline for new insights. Her humor, friendliness and mentorship of graduate students leave a distinct legacy.
“She was always willing to take on a student in need of help—she had a soft spot in her heart for graduate students,” said Kim Graber, head of the renamed Department of Health and Kinesiology. “If they were experiencing challenges or difficulties, if they were not sure what they wanted to study, she’d always lend a helping hand, and be the person to listen to their concerns, and take them under her wing.”
A changing field
Sydnor left her mark on her department in more ways than one. The large triptych painting by Illinois alumna Brett Eaton and posters that line the first floor of Louise Freer Hall, celebrating the female pioneers of the field, are based on Eaton and 50 other undergraduates’ archival research in Sydnor’s course “Sport in Modern Society.”
The exhibit, “An Untold Story: U of I Female Faculty in the History of American Athletics and Sports Scholarship at the University of Illinois,” was funded by the Illinois Ethnography of the University Initiative and Illinois Gender Equity Council after Sydnor applied for them.
“So many alums will walk up and down the halls during visits and really appreciate the art because they bring memories back for them,” said Graber, who joined Illinois six years after Sydnor.
Sydnor always took pride in teaching popular classes, which were often highly rated in student reviews. It’s especially rewarding when former students reach back out to discuss a class concept that clicked for them years later, she said.
She also taught experimental courses, like one focused on extreme sport, to lead students into important topics of culture and theory. The class used a book she co-edited with Robert Rinehart, “To the Extreme: Alternative Sports, Inside and Out,” as a basis for study.
“What I do doesn’t predict or control, it doesn’t necessarily ‘solve’ something,” she said. “Instead, you converse. ‘What does it mean to be human in different times and places? In different bodies?’ I’ve tried to contribute that to my classes, my teaching, my research.”
As a physical education undergraduate at the University of Delaware, Sydnor was interested in cultural studies as well as sport, having played both lacrosse and field hockey. Sydnor continued her academic track at the University of Washington, where she obtained her master’s degree, and Pennsylvania State University for her doctorate in Interdisciplinary Humanities.
With her rare combination of research interests, Sydnor had accepted the idea of becoming an independent scholar.
I’ve loved being part of Illinois because of those leaders who had forethought and courage to pioneer new ideas.
Synthia Sydnor
Retired HK faculty member
“I thought that what I was doing contributed to knowledge, but I didn’t know if any university would ever hire me. And that was OK.” Her experience in ancient Greek language and cultural studies laid a framework for a scholarly niche missing in kinesiology. When she arrived at Illinois in 1988, the field of kinesiology was widening its umbrella.
At the time, Illinois’ Kinesiology department head Karl Newell had begun hiring an “amalgamation” of exciting, cross-discipline scholars, Sydnor said. The department had changed its name from “physical education” to “kinesiology” the year before, and Newell was pushing for other departments across the world to follow suit.
Sydnor even wrote an article with Newell about the historical development of the word “kinesiology,” rooted in the Greek term “kinesis.” They argued that the term was broad enough to hold multiple disciplines of movement and would have plenty of staying power.
She admires the developments of each of the three department heads she’s worked with—such as Wojtek Chodzko’s push to focus on healthy aging, and Graber’s empowerment of younger faculty.
“I’ve loved being part of Illinois because of those leaders who had forethought and courage to pioneer new ideas, and we’re on the cusp of that now with changing to ‘Health and Kinesiology,’” Sydnor said. “I love our department and how much it’s grown, and how much Kim Graber has let the new young professors lead us in research initiatives.”
In retirement, she’ll continue working with Health and Kinesiology Teaching Assistant Professors Caitlin Clarke and Jesse Couture to develop a student textbook, essentially a second edition of her 2021 book “Social Theory for Sport Lovers.”
She’s hoping to finish up her two books of her own: One that explicates new aspects of sport and its futures, and another in reception studies, focusing on how ancient motifs and symbols live on in physical culture in new ways that past civilizations would not comprehend.
“I feel so fortunate, I’ve just loved it here,” Sydnor said. “It enabled my creativity, it enabled collaboration with great thinkers across campus and hopefully helped students approach sport in a learned way in their professional and personal lives.”
The Lifetime Fitness Program sports an eight-decade history at the University of Illinois of helping adults ages 55 and older stay fit
Members of the Lifetime Fitness Program swing medicine balls overhead for an upper body exercise. Classes in the spring and fall terms are hosted at the Campus Recreation Center East in Urbana. (Photo provided)
It’s 7:30 a.m. at Campus Recreation Center East on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Charmaine Young swings a 10-pound exercise ball around her head before lowering to the exercise mat for a “Superman” pose, which works her back muscles.
Young is 86 years old, but you’d never guess it based on how she moves in the Lifetime Fitness Program, the five-day-a-week group exercise class run by the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health. She’s been returning to the class each semester for nearly 38 years.
“I live alone, and outside of a log or a tree limb, I can pick up whatever I need,” Young said. “The [Lifetime Fitness Program] is such a part of me, it’s hard to take it apart.”
The Lifetime Fitness Program, “LFP” for short, sports an eight-decade history at the University of Illinois of helping adults ages 55 and older stay fit, while supporting the college’s research goals.
The program recently changed hands after longtime KCH Professor Ken Wilund, who ran LFP for more than a decade, left for the University of Arizona.
But Lifetime Fitness quickly found fresh legs under it, with two first-year faculty at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the helm: KCH Assistant Professors Jack Senefeld and Emerson Sebastião.
“[Wilund] was looking for someone else to sort of liven up the program,” Senefeld said. “He asked Emerson and I if we would be involved, and we both excitedly said yes.”
Of course, the program didn’t just “fall in their laps,” Sebastião said. Both faculty have research bona fides in exercise science, especially for older adults.
What they’ve quickly discovered is a fitness group brimming with devotees, many of whom have been coming back to the weekday classes for decades. And there’s room for more.
“COVID was not a fun time for society, and a lot of community-based, physical activity-based programs had really dwindling communities,” Senefeld said. “Our goal has been to promote the program and increase the number of people that know about it, because the people who know about it, love it.”
While the pair of faculty members administer the program and oversee its research, the 7 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. weekday classes are run by undergraduate students for class credit and supervised by graduate students Ashley Morgan and Kaitlyn Pawelczyk. Sebastião, like Wilund before him, still attends a couple of sessions each week.
“Having this close connection, being able to work with the older adults, it’s good to be around them. It’s fun—it helps me in other areas as well,” he said. “Talking about building community, I think it’s important to be there, show our faces.”
LFP is a community unto itself. Each class radiates positivity, even in those early mornings.
“That’s an awesome part of the Lifetime Fitness Program, the social, community aspect of it. Not even just for the members, it’s even been like that for me,” said Pawelczyk, a first-year grad student coordinator for the program studying Nutritional Sciences. “Everyone is so supportive, caring, invested in each other’s lives from an exercise standpoint and from an intentional standpoint. Everyone wants to know how everyone is doing and support them.”
A reservoir for research
The year was 2009, and Sandy Goss Lucas had recently retired from the University of Illinois, where she directed the Introductory Psychology curriculum. A friend of hers tipped her off to a study in kinesiology, researching whether women’s weight was better controlled through diet or exercise, and Lucas decided to join.
She was put on the exercise track and found out that the regimen increased the participants’ bone density, among other positive things, she said. For her participation, she got a small payment and a free semester of the Lifetime Fitness Program.
“We were intersecting with people who were doing Lifetime Fitness anyway, so I went to see what it was all about,” she said. “And I got hooked.”
The friendly atmosphere, challenging exercises, and “phenomenal” student instructors immediately appealed to her. Lucas, now 74, has been coming back for the past 15 years.
“It’s just been one of the best experiences of my life,” she said.
Having this close connection, being able to work with the older adults, it’s good to be around them.
Emerson Sebastião
HK assistant professor
Many of Lucas’ classmates found the class in the same way, after going through a research study in the college. That’s intentional: Many KCH faculty are interested in recruiting older adults for exercise studies, but after the study elapses, older adults might not have a place to stay in touch, Sebastião said.
“This program also serves that purpose—to have a place to go after research studies are done, and then they can be integrated with that group and then start building their community and keep exercising, which is the main focus,” he said. “We want them to be long-term exercisers, not just for 12 weeks, which is normally how a study would last.”
The exercise is “vigorous,” according to 20-year LFP attendee Fran Hacker, who said the regular activity helped her recovery from cancer.
“When we’re off a week or two, I can notice the difference,” she said. But the program’s different classes—stretches in the morning, strength work, water aerobics and yoga—are designed to be functional, instructors said.
“You want to tailor the program to the fact that they are older adults. We want to be careful of balance, of the knees, obviously, but we want to make it fun,” Pawelczyk said.
The next frontier for the professors is getting new research elements off the ground, Senefeld said. Many of the adults who keep coming back to Lifetime Fitness are interested in their health; Senefeld and Sebastião are planning to implement regular assessments on various fitness metrics, from strength and aerobic capacity to walking speed.
“They’re really interested to know if they’re slowing down, and so we can help them quantify that and provide that feedback and then use that to look at how does physical exercise benefit older adults,” Senefeld said.
The Lifetime Fitness team recently published a program overview in Kinesiology Review, running through the structure of the program, its physical benefits for older adults and experiential learning for the student instructors.
The group’s social ties have kept the cohort going strong, even through the COVID-19 pandemic. When classes were canceled in early 2020, a group of exercisers began meeting at West Side Park for spaced-out, masked-up outdoor yoga. The tradition of meeting on weekends has kept up ever since, said Mike Sims, an 11-year participant in LFP.
“We text each other and meet on Saturdays and sometimes go out for coffee and watch movies after that,” Sims said. “The [social aspect] opens up a whole atmosphere bigger than just exercising.”
Just three weeks after a knee replacement surgery, Lucas was back in class stretching with the rest of the cohort. Her classmates and the student instructors were, as always, ready to welcome her back.
“We’re a very close group, right now we have people going through breast cancer, ovarian cancer, chemo. People have gone through all kinds of things, we take a meal, we stay in touch, we check up on each other,” she said.
“I just feel very, very strongly that this group has kept me sane.”
(Members of the Lifetime Fitness Program pay $30 a month for full membership. Summer classes run until August 11, MWF from 8-9 a.m. at Freer Hall. Fall classes will resume Monday-Friday at CRCE on August 28).
The AHS Class of 2027 gathered in Huff Hall for the first time.
Welcome Week at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign capped off with individual college celebrations scattered across campus.
The College of Applied Health Sciences brought first-year students to Huff Hall for a spirited welcome and resource-sharing session. A few members of the newest freshman class offered their thoughts on why they chose AHS and what they’re looking forward to in the new academic year.
Mustafa Siddique, hailing from Naperville, Ill., had a lot of fun with the “festive” atmosphere of University of Illinois Welcome Week, where it felt like everyone was there to lend a helping hand.
Mustafa is studying interdisciplinary health sciences on the pre-medical school track. The College of Applied Health Sciences won out in his school choice for its real-world usefulness.
“It kind of gives you a perspective into the specific field that you’re going into instead of just science as a whole. So I thought AHS was a good choice,” he said.
Arely Soto, from Aurora, Ill., was exposed to a wide range of therapists through her mother, who’s a social worker. After speaking with a speech pathologist and learning about her career, Arely decided speech and hearing science was the path she wanted to follow.
Experiencing Illinois Sights and Sounds, the capstone Welcome Week event that teaches new students Illinois traditions, was an early highlight for her. Especially taking a huge picture with her class packed into a “Block I” on the Memorial Stadium field.
“I’m really excited for RSOs to start, to get involved and see what the schools offer in general.”
Dallas Miles, from South Holland in the Chicago suburbs, said his family always encouraged him to do something in the health field.
“I’m glad I’m here now,” said Miles, who’ll be studying interdisciplinary health sciences in his freshman year. After Welcome Week, he’s got plenty of Illini merchandise—shirts and stickers galore.
Dallas’ vision for his career vision orbits around health technology, “making stuff like hearing aids and heart monitors” to help patients day-to-day, he said.
Allison Pines is from Highlands Ranch, Colo., but she’s a “religious Cubs fan” through and through. In fact, she declared for recreation sport and tourism with a concentration in sports management in the hopes of becoming an analyst for a Major League Baseball team.
“I was really impressed with the prestige that the concentration in sports management held, it’s something that I’ve been dreaming of for a very long time. The fact that I found a prestigious program at a school I’m passionate about drove me to Applied Health Sciences,” she said.
“Sports management is my declared major but I may get involved in kinesiology or other opportunities this college has to offer.”
Illinois freshmen Sam Rausenberger from Carterville and Mihir Patel from Vandalia share an interest in the human body and how it works. Majoring in kinesiology at AHS seemed an easy choice for both of them.
“I like sports and fitness and I like helping people,” Patel said. “Physical therapy spoke to me, basically, I feel like that’s something I can do.”
Both freshmen are interested in the physical therapy path, specifically in the world of athletics.
“I took a health class my freshman year which was required and I loved learning about the skeleton and muscles and all the movement,” Rausenberger said. “I didn’t take another class like that until anatomy in my senior year, we did the bones and learned in-depth how muscles move and how they work. I was super interested in that and knew this is what I want to do.”
After putting their names in for student organizations at the AHS Student Welcome—and in Patel’s case, catching a prized Illini shirt thrown into the crowd at Sights and Sounds—both are excited to explore the U. of I.’s opportunities.
“I’m definitely looking forward to getting to know more people and knowing the campus, what I’ve seen so far. It’s a beautiful campus. I just don’t know my way around yet,” Rausenberger said.
Greetings friends and alumni of the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism,
Welcome to the 2024 spring edition of the RST newsletter. This publication features research endeavors from our faculty, notable student accomplishments and the ongoing engagement of our esteemed alumni.
We were delighted this semester by a visit from Gov. J.B. Pritzker and saddened by the loss of a dear former colleague and mentor. We take great pride in showcasing the achievements of our students, and we shine a spotlight on faculty members, underscoring how their research endeavors propel our department forward as a trailblazer in advancing knowledge and shaping policy and practice. Whether you are an alum, a current student, or a member of our esteemed faculty, we trust that you will find these narratives both enlightening and enriching.
As I reflect on the past academic year serving as interim head, I am deeply appreciative of the rich legacy of leadership within our faculty and alumni. Your enduring goodwill and assistance have contributed to the strategic growth of our department, evident in the expansion of our educational offerings and the increased visibility of our scholarly endeavors.
Warm regards,
Bill Stewart Interim Head Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism
The Speech Accessibility Project aims to amass a database of audio recordings from people with disabilities that affect their speech. (Getty Images)
Speech recognition software such as Alexa, Google Assistant, Amazon Echo, Cortana and Siri allow anyone to access information and use smart home technologies through spoken questions and commands. At least, that’s what they’re supposed to do. Unfortunately, these devices typically don’t recognize speech that is affected by a disability.
Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois, wants to change that. He launched the Speech Accessibility Project (SAP), which aims to amass a database of audio recordings from people with disabilities that affect their speech. Volunteers with Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), stroke-related disabilities, cerebral palsy and Down syndrome record responses to three different types of prompts to capture commands, phonetically diverse speech such as one might produce when reading aloud, and conversational speech.
SHS Associate Professors Laura Mattie and Marie Moore Channell are leading the Illinois Down Syndrome Team. “People with Down syndrome have intelligibility issues so it’s common for them to not be understood at all or to be misunderstood by voice recognition systems,” Mattie said. And it’s not just that it’s the hot new thing, as Channell observed. “These systems are among the strategies we put into place to make life easier for people with disabilities,” she said. One can imagine the frustration that results from being unable to use technologies that are supposed to improve your life.
Mattie said she and Channell put a lot of effort into developing the prompts for the recordings “…to make them representative of the kinds of things for which individuals would be using the software.” Added Channell, “It’s about making sure on the front end that the recordings are valuable and representative so that what goes into the database is relevant.”
The Speech Accessibility Project database initially will be available to the consortium of technology companies that are funding the project, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft, before becoming widely available to the public.
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.”
