KSU’s Department of Health Promotion and Physical Education announced that it will offer a wider variety of physical activity courses for students to choose from this semester.
These classes will include beach volleyball, yoga, beginning and intermediate tennis, softball, cycling, aerobic conditioning, weight lifting, basketball and soccer for the fall semester. The department also has plans to offer courses in lacrosse, ice skating, Zumba and ballroom dancing as early as spring.
Bernie Goldfine, KSU’s physical activities coordinator, is beginning his 19th year at KSU.
“As coordinator, my role is to make sure that we offer a wide variety of physical activity classes,” Goldfine said. “Before, [the fitness classes] were just to help fill requirements for students who were Physical Education and Sports Management majors.”
Goldfine said before this semester the general student population had very few seats available to them in these courses, but now his department is offering more classes with a wider variety of sports for students to choose from.
In addition to offering more courses, Goldfine said his department is increasing the number of sections for each course in hopes of reaching students who might be majoring in something other than P.E. or Sports Management. “We’ve been screening applicants and getting really, really good adjunct professors in the community to come and teach these classes,” said Goldfine.
He said many of these courses will be held off campus at nearby facilities.
“We are making really good cooperative arrangements with facilities elsewhere,” Goldfine said. “We have a cooperative agreement with the City of Acworth to run our softball classes, and one of my former students is the head of Acworth Parks and Recreation.”
He said they also have an agreement with Volley One Volleyball, a local facility that has multiple volleyball courts avaliable to KSU for classes. Goldfine said he will instruct a bicycling class that is set to use new Noonday Creek Trail located approximately half a mile from campus. KSU will also offer an ice skating course at the local IceForum in the spring.
“As people get older in our culture, they become more sedentary,” he said. “Inactivity is one the greatest risks we have to this nation’s health.”
Goldfine said studies show that college-age students tend to be less active and subsequently gain weight between their freshman and senior years. He said he hopes to battle this trend by offering classes that encourage students to stay active.
