Welcome to Utah Valley State College the Department of Physical Education. Hi, I am Tom Perkins and I am chair of the department. We are glad that you have an interest in our department. Currently at Utah Valley State College in our department, we have two, four year degrees. The first degree is a Bachelor degree in Physical Education and Recreation, with two emphases. The first emphasis is in Outdoor Recreation in which our students are able to complete this degree and go out and find jobs in tourism, outdoor recreation specialists, cabin and tour guides and such. Our second emphasis is in the area of Exercise Science. Our faculty are well prepared in helping our students gain the knowledge and skills to go out and work in the communities, in the areas of rehabilitation, personal fitness instructor. It also prepares our graduates to go on to graduate school, especially those who have an interest to go onto Medical, Dental, or Physical Therapy School. A second Bachelors degree which we offer is in Physical Education Teacher Education which allows our students to go out and teach in the public schools. We prepare our students to be effective Physical Education teachers in the secondary schools, including middle schools as well as high schools. Many of these students have the desire to go on and coach in their prospective sports. In our department we also offer students the option to take the Associates degree which is a two year general education degree which allows our students to get the general educational background in these two four year areas and then perhaps transfer or find jobs after a two year degree. Within a broad spectrum of classes which we offer in our degrees, we have many activity classes. Many of our students enjoy this time to be out in the field or in the gymnasium and pursuing these types of skills. They are involved in everything from rock climbing, scuba diving, kayaking and other recreational skills, into the sports skills such as; racquetball, tennis and golf.

We have a great young faculty in the department of Physical Education and Recreation. Many of these young professionals are dedicated, not only to the teaching but to completing research and helping in the community in their respective areas. Currently we have Dr. Slack who is involved with the Intermountain Health Association, the hospitals and doing testing with pedometers and checking on testing of walking in how that relationship ties in with menopausal women and some of their health concerns. So, our faculty are busy and involved with completing research in their area.

We started our Majors program, last fall and we have currently about 130 majors which is three or four times more than we needed to have to start a program. We are encouraging new majors, those that have a specific interest in our field and we will try to fit them in and prepare them to go out into the workforce.

We had one graduate of our Liberal Art degree, with an emphasis on Outdoor Education that went on to graduate school last year. We have a large number of students that have been waiting for two years, for our four year degree to come on-line. Many of them have stayed here waiting for that. So, we have many fifth and sixth year student seniors now trying to hurry and catch up on those additional classes that we were not able to offer back then, but do have now. We are currently in need of three new faculty in each of those areas of emphasis. We have openings in the Outdoor Recreation management, in the area of Exercise Science and especially in the Physical Education Teacher Education program. We are currently in the process of hiring a new faculty member in the area of Outdoor Recreation Management. This person would assist our current Program Coordinator in that area, in teaching courses as well as teaching our outdoor kayaking, recreation, and rock climbing courses and developing more of a tourism atmosphere within the department for our students to go out and get immediate jobs in that area.

All of the faculty that we have hired in the last eight years have had their doctorate. We have been steadily preparing to move into this four year academic environment by hiring only PhD´s. We have been fortunate that the faculty we have hired, not only have the academic experience but they also have the outdoor or practical experience physiology. Dr. Vener, who we hired three years ago, even worked with NASA in some of their animal studies, assisting with one of their labs at Utah State University. So, she has had many years of experience before she was hired here. All of our faculty have had jobs before they came here. We have only had Dr. Slack who was a brand new graduate. These are not just twenty year olds, they are usually in their 30´s and have ten years teaching experience at other institutions or have had practical experience in their field. We are especially proud of Dr. Slack´s service to the community and to our country by serving in Iraq for eighteen months. He had to put on hold his teaching career and even the completion of his dissertation by giving that service to our country. We are grateful for his service and for the time since he has been able to complete his dissertation. He is now a full-fledged Assistant Professor in our department and doing a great job in the area of Exercise Science. It´s a great environment; I have been at Utah Valley State College for twenty five years. I have seen it grow from a 3000 student Community Technical School to our current status of top class State College.

We are lucky here in our department of Physical Education to have the support of our Administrative Staff, especially our Dean, Sam Rushforth. Sam has been very supportive on every initiative that we have brought forward, whether it was additional need for funding or additional need for faculty or just the support in helping us get through the week to week problems. We have felt that support and are thankful for it.