COVID-19: Update from the Director

COVID-19: Update from the Director

September 8, 2020

Message from the Director, School of Kinesiology

Dear Kinesiology Community,

I hope you have all had a good summer. For the School’s faculty and staff, it has been a summer of hard work reimagining and building new approaches to university life. The resumption of activity and operations across different sectors has been gradual and guided by enhanced safety protocols. We have aligned our strategy with our commitment to the health and safety of the UBC community, and all Fall and Winter term courses have been prepared for online delivery. The School has implemented an operational safety plan as this phase unfolds under the guidance of the provincial government, Ministry of Health and WorkSafe BC.

Faculty are returning to labs to continue their research under these enhanced safety protocols. Teaching, research and engagement will all be different, yet we strive to bring the energy and inspiration of new beginnings that characterizes the School’s excellence and enduring spirit. Our faculty and staff are committed to making it the best year it can be for all students, encouraging them to achieve their greatest potential. In doing so, we encourage a welcoming environment of respect, equity, and inclusion, where individual voices are heard and participation in activities of the School is valued.

I’m delighted to be welcoming students from all over Canada and the world. We have strived to make online learning flexible, accessible, comfortable, and interactive with technical and design features to enhance learning. Our new KIN 101 orientation course on the KIN homepage is an example of helpful resources for students. Jump Start began this week with the Opening Ceremony held on Tuesday, September 1, 2020. Students and faculty will welcome new students over the course of the week. If you weren’t able to see the Jump Start event, a recording may be viewed online. I encourage you to watch it! Imagine Day, on September 8, marks the start of the UBC Fall term. We hope you will be able to join in this inspirational event. Faculty and staff may join in an Imagine Collaborators “premiere watch party” via Zoom (an opportunity to enjoy the event alongside other colleagues) or alternatively on YouTube.

As the academic year unfolds, we will continue to plan creative ways to meaningfully engage, inform and guide new and returning KIN students, Alumni and the larger community. For example, we will be holding a biweekly graduate seminar with UBC-Okanagan School of Health and Exercise Sciences that will be open to our Alumni. While this year’s university experience will be new, our goal is to ensure that students and all members of the school community are included, supported and feel collectively part of our unique and enduring KIN culture. I want to acknowledge the extraordinary contributions of Staff and Faculty who have shown such remarkable commitment and resilience since the onset of the pandemic, including maintaining both safety and excellence in the delivery of our curricula and in research.

I wish you all a wonderful start to the new academic year!

Dr. Robert Boushel, D.Sc.
Professor and Director
School of Kinesiology

For more UBC, Faculty of Education and School of Kinesiology response updates to Covid-19, Click Here.

Importance of keeping active during the pandemic

Sep.  7, 2020 – Article in the Georgia Straight about the importance of keeping active during the pandemic with an interview with Dr. Katie Di Sebastiano. Read it here!

Imagine Day 2020

On Tuesday, September 8, start imagining the possibilities! This year you will be able to enjoy Imagine UBC virtually, wherever you are in the world.

For most students, Imagine UBC replaces the first day of classes. You will have the chance to meet some great people including the School’s Director, Robert Boushel, some of your future professors, key staff members, and other students. It will be an opportunity to learn about your new academic environment and the specific expectations of the School of Kinesiology.

By participating in Imagine UBC with your orientation group, meeting your School Director, and virtually visiting some of the over 350+ club booths at the Main Event, you’ll be able to make connections all day long that will help kick-start your UBC experience.

Imagine Day Phone Wallpaper




Download the Kinesiology Imagine Day Phone Wallapaper!
Click Here!

(Right click on opened image, and select ‘Save Image As…’ to download)

Mentorship Program – Applications are open!

Join the Kinesiology Mentorship Program

Since 2009, the Kinesiology Mentorship Program has engaged close to 200 alumni mentors and 350 student mentees in experiences that have expanded professional networks, generated confidence around career and life goals, and fostered the development of essential workplace skills.

 
The 2020/2021 program will be running online this year and applications for mentees and mentors are now open.

Mahlalela, Jama

Jama Mahlalela, a BHK ‘04 alumnus of the UBC School of Kinesiology, was a Varsity basketball star, a community leader, and is now the head coach of the Raptors 905 G League in the NBA. He was a key contributor in the Raptor’s 2019 win against the Golden State Warriors making the Raptors the first team outside of the US to win the NBA Championship.

As a student at UBC, Mahlalela was recruited to the Thunderbirds varsity basketball and served as co-captain in 2003 and helped bring his team the Canada West title that year. During his fourth year, Jama was elected as president of the Athletic Council (where he served as the representative council for all varsity teams), and upon graduation, he received the Jama Mahlalela Award, created in his honour. The award recognizes excellence in the areas of selfless dedication, leadership, and spirit and has only been awarded twice in the past decade.

Jama recently sat down with us and reminisced about his days as a student in KIN and the lessons that learned that he has carried with him ever since. Reflecting on his student experience, Jama believes that he learned the most about being a coach as a result of his KIN sport and coaching classes. “Though I was a basketball player, many sports didn’t come easy to me. In class when we did sports such as swimming, the sense of being a natural athlete just didn’t take me through. It was my KIN classes that taught me how to be an educator and a teacher and where I learned about coaching. Because my body had no clue how to perform the sport as the motions were not natural to me, I had to learn to break down each movement. It’s an artform and a skill to be able to teach someone else how to perform an exercise,” says Jama. The person who guided and helped Jama most through his years at UBC was professor emeritus, Gail Wilson. She is the one who “taught me how to think about sport and how it connects to society. This is what helped carry me forward to my career right now.”

On his first day of checking into residence Jama met his roommates, who would form his core group of friends throughout university and with whom he has stayed close ever since. “My residence experience was really valuable as it created a community and a network of people that have stay connected to me throughout my life.” Jama recalls that one of the highlights of his time on campus was participating in the annual Storm the Wall event, which seemed to bring the whole campus together. Our team was always quite competitive, and one year we even won!”

When asked what his advice for students and alumni is, Jama responded, “relate to people. People come first. The way you treat people and engage with them is really important. For those who are finishing university and moving on to the next phases of your life, that choice you make around the relationships you have is crucial and forms the basis of who you are.” The secret for Jama is to do everything with a positive attitude. “We can choose to be positive. A lot of negative things happen in our world, but we can still choose to find a positive approach to those things and find a way to combat them, deal with them and process them. I preach to my players every day to have a ‘sunny-day mentality’. Each of us can carry a sunny-day mentality that will loop back and give you the energy to combat all challenges even when it is stormy.”

McCabe, Martha

Martha McCabe is a 2-time Olympic swimmer in the 200m breaststroke, a world championship, Pan Am Games medallist, and the president and founder of Head to Head Mentorship Program. Recalling her days as a student in KIN, Martha speaks fondly about the learning environment and the strong influences of the people she met there. “You go in as an 18-year-old and come out as a 23-year-old. There is a lot of development and growth that happens in those 4-5 years in university. By being in a positive environment with people who I looked up to, it was easy for me to grow – this set me up for life. The people around me taught me about life skills like time management and resiliency, and to just go out and do the things that I aspired to do.”

Upon her retirement as an Olympic swimmer, Martha was inspired to start Head to Head, an organization that promotes mental resilience and physical wellness through Olympian led mentorship programs. The idea was sparked when she realized that she was receiving a lot of requests to give public talks at swim and leadership clinics across the country. Martha says, “I drove across Canada and did 55 workshops in 60 days. In doing that, it was like a test run for me to see if there was a business in these speaking events. I wanted to know if there was an appetite amongst schools and clubs to pay Olympians to deliver mentorship programs. Once that was confirmed, I thought of ways to set this up as a business to offer other Olympians this opportunity. As an individual I can only stay relevant for so long, so I created Head to Head as a way to stay involved in the community in the long term, and offer mentorships that support life skills development like managing nerves, resilience through adversity, and building healthy habits.

Inclusivity is crucial to McCabe. It’s a component of her own public speaking engagements and is championed through Head to Head. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Martha came out publicly this year with the hope that by sharing her story she could serve as a role model for other young female athletes to feel comfortable with themselves. “I want to be an example to young female swimmers and help ones who are struggling with this, so they can see it’s normal,” says McCabe. Her advice to people who are not out yet is to: “take your own time to figure yourself out. It takes everyone different times and experiences, which make you realize different things about yourself. Build up the support in your own life, whether it be from a family member, a friend. Have some sort of ally, or role model you can reach out to for when you eventually come out.” She said inclusion is a topic Olympians are encouraged to discuss, with the goal of helping young people build inclusive environments in all the spaces they occupy.

Career Crossroads – Episode #2

Introducing Career Crossroads, a UBC School of Kinesiology podcast series produced by KIN Young Alumni, for KIN young alumni and graduating students. It’s critical now more than ever, no matter what stage of your career you’re in, to continue to look for work and stay connected during these unprecedented times.

Join KIN alumni, Yingying Zhao and Alyssa Reyes as they interview other Kinesiology alumni about how they navigated their next steps in life after university. Hear alumni stories, experiences and tips for success to help guide you in your career journey.

Episode #2 – August 24, 2020

In Episode #2, Yingying interviews Shayne River Casey-Shaw (BKin17, PT20), a certified physiotherapist, yoga and pilates instructor who turned her passion for retreats and rehabilitation into an online business when COVID hit.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual interviewees belong solely to them and do not represent those of their employers unless explicitly stated. Nor do they necessarily represent the views or policies of the UBC School of Kinesiology.

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The Impact of Abdominal Body Contouring Surgery on Physical Function After a Massive Weight Loss: A Non-Randomized Control Trial

Principle Investigator:
Dr. Cameron Mitchell

Details:
It is estimated that 70% of individuals who undergo a massive weight loss develop excess skin (ES). The ES around the abdominal area has been shown through patient reported outcome measures (PROs) to negatively impact physical function. Yet no studies have examined the impact of surgeries that remove ES on direct measures of physical function of those who had a massive weight loss. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to examine the impact of abdominal excess skin removal surgeries on direct measures of physical function in individuals who have undergone a massive weight loss.

What is involved?
As a participant in this study, you would be asked to participate in a measure of body composition, completing questionnaires and simple physical function tests assessing your walks, balance and strength. Your participation would involve 2 sessions separated by 8-12 weeks, each of which is approximately 110 minutes.

Eligibility Criteria:
Those who might be considered for participation in the study would include those who
□ Are an abled body and can perform day to day tasks
□ Have lost a minimum of 25% of their original weight
□ Have Body Mass Index (BMI) between 25-40 kg/m2
□ Are between age 18-65 years-old
□ Have excess skin in the abdominal area
□ Are weight stable with no more than 5% weight change in the past 3 months
□ Are not on atypical antipsychotics including but not limited to clozapine, olanzapine, quetiapine, risperidone, aripiprazole, amisulpiride, ziprasidone, asenapine, iloperidone, lurasidone and paliperidone.
□ Are non-smokers

What do we offer?
In appreciation for your time, you will receive financial compensation, in addition to a free-of- charge fitness report card indicating your body composition and exercise capacity. Physical activity advice will also be provided to you by an exercise professional.

How do I participate?
Contact: Sobhan Mardan-Dezfouli by email: smardand@alumni.ubc.ca or call 778-320-0253.

Thank you,
Poster:

End date:
08/20/2021

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