Join activities hosted by Health and Kinesiology faculty and students
Exercise is Medicine Month on Campus kicked off with an in-person yoga event at Freer Hall lawn. (Provided)
Exercise is Medicine on Campus (EIM-OC) is an annual initiative that calls upon colleges and universities to promote physical activity as a core component of health and wellness. More than 200 campuses in the United States have registered for the program.
This month, Health and Kinesiology faculty and students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign—led by this year’s EIM at Illinois committee chair Emerson Sebastião—have planned out several activities to bring campus together in movement. Representatives from the Illinois Counseling Center, Campus Recreation, McKinley Health Center, Carle Illinois College of Medicine and local health organizations joined this year’s committee.
All month, participants can join the online “Move More Challenge” by posting a video or photo of them exercising, and tagging @illinoishealthkin on Instagram.
Coming up:
Free Pilates
A free, introductory pilates class in front of Freer Hall, led by HK Teaching Assistant Professor Alana Harris. Bring your own mat!
When: Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 12 p.m. at Freer Hall lawn
Check your vitals
Get your blood pressure and resting heart rate checked for free by HK students and faculty. Students will provide education on physical activity and exercise guidelines.
When: Wednesday, Oct. 15 from noon to 1 p.m. at Illinois Street Residence Hall Wednesday, Oct. 22 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Student Dining and Residential Programs building (SDRP)
Fall into Fitness 5K | Run, Walk and Roll
Join a 5K race that starts at Freer Hall and loops through campus. Check-in and registration begins at 7:30 a.m., and the race starts at 8:30 a.m.
When: Sunday, Oct. 19 at 8:30 a.m. Check-in begins at 7:30 a.m.
Read Chancellor Isbell’s official proclamation for Exercise is Medicine Month on Campus:
Committee Members 2025-2026
Chair: Emerson Sebastião, Ph.D., Health and Kinesiology
Nicholas Burd, Ph.D., Health and Kinesiology
Alana Harris, Ph.D, Health and Kinesiology
Diana Morales (Graduate Student Representative)
Harrison Guo (Undergraduate Student Representative)
Maggie Verklan, the Counseling Center
Alexia Hammonds (Graduate Student Representative)
Brie Whitted, McKinley Health Center
Jared Willard, MD, Christie Clinic
Annie Tigranyan (Carle Illinois College of Medicine Student Representative)
Emerson Sebastião is joining the faculty of the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health as an assistant professor. Sebastião spoke about teaching at his alma mater, his research influences and the college’s diversity initiatives.
Q: You’re from Brazil and did your undergraduate work there. How did you end up at Illinois for your Ph.D.?
A: My story might not be different than many others. But I’ll tell you what happened. During my master’s in Brazil, I had a very important mentor [Sebastião Gobbi]. He was my advisor and he completed his Ph.D. abroad in Canada. But when he got back to Brazil to start his lab he would stop by every single day and say, ‘I’m not going to advise anybody for the Ph.D. You better go away, preferably abroad.’ I loved that idea, and I always wanted to know different places. When I was doing my master’s, we started looking at potential places and potential advisors. And, obviously, we started with Canada, where [Gobbi] completed his doctoral studies. But we were unable to find anything there. And then he ended up going to a conference in Tsukuba, Japan, back in 2008 where he met Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko. And Wojtek was presenting something related to older adults, and he ended up talking to Wojtek. And when he got back, he said, ‘I believe I found the perfect advisor for your Ph.D., so you’re going to Illinois.’ That’s how I ended up at Illinois. Things ended up being facilitated because of [KCH Associate Professor] Dr. [Andiara] Schwingel, as well. That’s how I ended up in Illinois, a world-class university, well-known researchers. So I was more than happy to join the cold land of Illinois.
Q: You’ll be teaching at your alma mater. Does that lower your anxiety about a new job?
A: I’ll tell you that does not lower my anxiety. It helps a little bit … I know that I’m coming back to a world-class university and a world-class program and that sets the bar pretty high, right? So it’s a different deal when you are a student. You are being trained and learning, so we are somehow protected. But as a faculty member, you are going to be involved in everything. You’re going to take part in big decisions not only at the department level but college as well—to fulfill the mission of the college, the university, the department. But I feel well-prepared for that. I believe that my five, almost six years at Northern Illinois provided me with the skills and abilities that I need to navigate all the things that I’m going to have to be doing as a faculty member at UIUC. And I love that. I love new challenges. To be honest, coming back to teach at Illinois and work at Illinois as a faculty is a dream come true. I’m going to work with people that have been really moving and shaping the field of kinesiology for many years. So I’m really happy and excited for that.
Q: What influenced you to study your research field?
A: In Brazil, it’s different than in the United States. For specific areas, like kinesiology and many others, you don’t really have a career outside academia to do research or even to really apply your knowledge as a researcher in the industry. So it’s either you go to a practical field, like professional, or you go to academia. I was having a lot of doubts until my sophomore year before I was invited to be part of Dr. Sebastião Gobbi’s lab. I studied physical activity and aging which was connected to an outreach program that was attending over 300 seniors in the university. So that really sparked my interest because we were conducting research and putting the knowledge we were creating in the lab into the community. So that where I fell in love and said, ‘OK, academia is the right place for me because I like to teach, but I also like to do research.’ And academia, at least at that time in Brazil, was the only environment that you could be doing that.
Q: Has having Pedro Hallal (director of the MPH program) created a pipeline for Brazilians to come to Illinois and AHS?
A: We hope so. That pipeline already exists in other departments. If you look at the economics department, by the time I was part of the doctoral program, I learned about this pipeline from Brazil, particularly, I believe, the Federal University of Pernambuco. And now I hope that’s going to be the same with kinesiology and Applied Health Sciences with Pedro. Pedro is a great scholar, a well-known researcher. He really is a scholar that we look at when it comes to physical activity and health. He led a very important study in Brazil regarding COVID, and he has a lot of connections, not only where he completed his studies in Pelotas, but throughout Brazil and across the globe to be honest. So I believe that he being there, now, is going to draw even more attention to Illinois, and not only for Brazilians that want to come and work but for students, as well. That’s very important. Brazil has a really good, strong scientific program … they send visiting scholars and students for a short period of time—say, one year—to work and learn new techniques and come back to Brazil and apply that there, to help training the future researchers in the field. So I believe, with Pedro being there, that will increase drastically.
Q: You look at the factors that influence physical activity participation and the consequences of physical activity. What were your influences to study that?
A: Since I was seven years old, I have been involved in sports—competitive sports, leisure sports. I come from a poor family, and growing up we did not have access to color TV or video games, VHS to watch movies. So most of the way I had fun was outside, mostly playing soccer, running around, those old-school type of activities, and I think that shaped me. Before college, I was thinking about something related to computer science—people said it was among the professions of the future. I wasn’t happy, and I found myself in kinesiology. And then my mom—my mom was almost 63 years old when I got into college. She had little time for leisure activity because she had to work. But she was always walking to everything—for work, to go to places. I saw how, based on the amount of movement that she had in her life compared to people at the same age, how different she was, physically different—being able to walk, do things, never getting so easily tired. So by the time I got into college, and I met Dr. Sebastião Gobbi, who was studying physical activity and aging and coordinating the physical activity program for seniors, I started to be more curious about it. What are the benefits of physical activity for older adults? Are these people participating because it is free of charge and close to their home or because of the social element involved in it? [Does] the environment matter? So all of these questions and talking to people and other researchers involved in that aspect shaped my interest to pursue this career.
Q: The college has been more intentional in recent years to address the lack of people of color in faculty roles. Did that influence you in coming back to Illinois?
A: I am aware of the efforts that the college and university have been doing to address this issue. For me it is very important, and I’m happy that the college is taking those concrete steps, drawing upon the Office of the Vice Chancellor on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Representation is important not only for students but also for faculty and staff. So, yes! That did influence my decision to coming back to Illinois. In Brazil, for example, throughout my education, I noticed that I was the only [person of color] in my class. And that was not different during college. Although I had excellent teachers, not a single one of them looked like me. So I started being more curious about it, and wonder, why is that? So definitely, this is something that I looked at when I applied to Illinois. I think this is very important, not only to provide an environment that people feel more comfortable but also for, as you said, a diverse student body to recognize that they can follow that path. Being intentional about faculty hiring will help create a more diverse next generation of leaders and researchers. Applying for jobs in academia, people normally look at the directory, at least I did. And if you see diversity, you immediately link that to place committed to the cause, so probably it is a good environment to work. Knowing all the college efforts, I am happy to join the department/college and help support the initiatives, and put my ideas to help move that agenda forward.
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).
Kinesiology faculty partner with Chicago’s service organization for the blind
How can accessible, home-based exercise programs be created for low-vision and blind adults? A team from the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health at the College of Applied Health Sciences will begin collaboration with the Chicago Lighthouse in the spring of 2024 to design one such training plan.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Campus Research Board has provided $25,000 in funding for the Exercise for Visual Impairments and Aging: Co-Designing a Home-Based Exercise Program for Blind and Visually Impaired Individuals (EXVIA) Project for two years.
“The purpose of this research is to collaboratively design a feasible home-based exercise program for individuals with low vision and blindness,” said KCH Assistant Professor Soyoung Choi, the project’s principal investigator.
EXVIA content will be developed in the spring and summer of 2024, followed by feasibility testing in the fall. Choi, an accessibility researcher and nurse, is joined on the project by her KCH faculty colleagues, assistant professors Susan Aguiñaga and Emerson Sebastião.
The EXVIA team also includes Dr. Schweta Chaudhary, an ophthalmologist and surgical consultant at Hines VA Hospital in Hines, Ill.
The Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind, founded in 1906, serves the blind, visually impaired, and Veteran communities with vision rehabilitation services, education, employment opportunities, and assistive technology and will play a key role in EXVIA. Choi noted that Chicago Lighthouse will “support participant recruitment and data collection. Through regular meetings, we will incorporate their expert opinions into developing exercise sessions tailored for individuals with low vision and blindness. We will set up a screen, speakers, and a video camera at The Chicago Lighthouse, serving as the primary data collection site, to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the home-based exercise program.”
Aiming to recruit three low-vision adults and three blind adults to participate, the EXVIA team will distribute information to the Chicago Lighthouse community and ultimately select seven volunteer participants “considering potential dropouts” and ensuring “a balanced representation across variables such as the onset of visual impairment (acquired vs. congenital), gender (male vs. female), and age brackets (20s-30s, 40s-50s),” Choi said.
The workouts will be identified and then designed via group discussion by the team to create eight home-based exercise sessions. Choi described a “focus on key training areas: muscle strength, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, balance, and bone density and joint health. Each session will be meticulously designed in accordance with the latest evidence-based advancements in exercise science, exercise physiology and adapted physical education, ensuring their effectiveness and acceptability for individuals with low vision and blindness. Upon completing the synthesis of synopses for the regimen, we will then create exercise videos, verbal instructions, and video descriptions.”
The team will utilize immersive computing and audiovisual resources, including a high-powered PC workstation, virtual video production, and audio recording equipment available at the SCIM Lab at Illinois’ Library Scholarly Commons to create the final products.
