FALL 2012
KINESIOLOGY This fall our new direct-admit four-year undergraduate major in Kinesiology officially admitted its first class. The University received 28,274 applications for the 3,360 spots in the Class of 2015, making this the most competitive year in the institution’s history. The most competitive program to be admitted to this year was the new Kinesiology program, with an 11 percent admission rate. We currently have 168 kinesiology majors, which includes 103 students in the last cycle of the two-year program and 65 students in the new four-year program. In the four-year program students begin to take courses in their major during the first semester. Over the next four years students have more time to explore their career options, take more advanced coursework, and become involved in preprofessional and program activities. For more information on the new four-year direct-admit Kinesiology program, go to curry.virginia.edu/ kinesiology-bsed
Editor: Luke Kelly, Director Kinesiology Program Kinesiology is published by the Curry School of Education and is sponsored by the Curry School of Education Foundation, P.O. Box 400276, Charlottesville, VA 22904 curry.virginia.edu/kinesiology-newsletter
Service, Scholarship, Leadership
Curry alumni excel in their professions Recent Grad Opens Nonprofit Gym Laura Pritchard (B.S.Ed. ‘09, M.Ed. ‘10)
Imagine living in a neighborhood where the nearest grocery store is over a half hour’s ride on the city bus. Where criminal activity takes place openly in plain sight of children playing in the streets. Where recreational running in the neighborhood is not an option and there are no public places for organized exercise. These are the conditions Laura Pritchard observed in an Atlanta neighborhood called The Bluff when as a second-year at U.Va. she took a year-long break from courses to do community service work. A dream began to formulate in her mind—a plan to help ameliorate the exercise and nutrition injustices she had observed. The dream stayed with the southwestern Virginia native as she went on to complete a graduate degree in exercise physiology. It followed her as she worked with two national championship U.Va. tennis teams as their strength and conditioning coach. In 2010 she moved to Atlanta and found a house across the street from Booker T. Washington High School, where Martin Luther King, Jr., attended as a youth. Little did she know that her vision would become reality so quickly. Last January she opened a non-profit gym called Urban Perform located in English Avenue in a renovated warehouse owned by New Life Covenant Church. Pritchard is the gym’s executive director and chief fundraiser, as well as fitness instructor. P HOTO BY F RE D P E RRY
KINES Undergraduate Program Update
Read more of Laura’s story at curry.virginia.edu/kinesiology-newsletter
Early Career Success: Patrick McKeon (Ph.D. ‘07) Patrick McKeon, PhD, ATC, CSCS, is well on his way to a stellar academic career. After joining the University of Kentucky’s College of Health Sciences as an assistant professor of athletic training in 2007, he received the 2009 Doctoral Dissertation Award from the National Athletic Trainer’s Association Research & Education Foundation. The award recognized the significance of his research on a four-week progressive balance training program designed to challenge individuals’ abilities to balance on one leg. The —continued on page 2
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