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My name is Dr. Scott Ronspies, and I'm in the Kinesiology
and Sports Studies Department.
I'm an assistant professor, and my primary duties include
teaching elementary and secondary physical
education methods courses.
My primary research interests includes physical activity
and physical fitness of youth populations.
Most of my research involves looking at physical activity
and physical fitness levels of youth and also I'm very
interested in youth obesity and the variables
that influence that.
Most recently I've been doing a lot of research that involves
looking at sleep duration and how that effects youth in terms
of obesity and physical activity and fitness levels, and I'm also
starting to look at how physical fitness levels impact student
achievement in the classroom.
Most recently I was involved with a presentation
for the ancient Egyptian symposium that took place here
at Eastern Illinois University and had the opportunity to talk
to the audience about ancient Egyptian sport and dance.
I just recently had two publications that came out,
one was in the qualitative report journal, and it focused
on a case study of one individual as to why they chose
physical education as a profession.
This student was a non-traditional student who had
numerous opportunities and real life world experiences in other
jobs and I was curious as to what attracted this individual
to the field of physical education.
The other publication that I have that just came out,
came out in the Illinois State Journal for IAFORD which is the
Illinois Association for Physical Education Recreation
and Dance, and I looked at middle school students'
perceptions of same sex and co-educational
physical education classes.
Right now I'm currently working on a study with college students
that's looking at sleep duration, and how that impacts
their physical activity and physical fitness levels,
and I'm also looking at an opportunity to do some research
with developing a new instrument that looks at motor skill
development with another colleague of mine Angie Fertado,
and we're looking at how we can measure motor skill ability,
et cetera, through the use of this new instrument
that he has created.
I think in terms of being in the physical education department,
researching physical activity, physical fitness and obesity
in youth is very important because as we see in our
school age children, youth obesity is a major epidemic
that's going on right now, and focusing on what variables
influence these behaviors is important because ultimately
we want kids to lead a healthy lifestyle and carry that on
into adulthood as well.
So I think the significance of that speaks for itself.
In terms of the university aspect of it, I think it's
important for us as professors to continue to add
to the literature, whatever research interests that we have,
I think that that's an obligation that we owe
to our professions and our disciplines, and like I said
with my line of research focusing on physical activity,
physical fitness in youth, I think that it's important that
I continue to add to that literature, to hopefully find
some kind of solution or some kind of intervention that will
assist these youth in being more active and being more healthy.
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