BIOMECHANICS AND KINESIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN COLORADO

Abstract

We are all grateful to Professor Jerry Barham for his work in assembling this conference. Those of us at UNC value greatly his professional work and appreciate his effort in bringing this international symposium to Colorado. As a young university, this institution is especially gratified to host such a distinguished event. This session of the 3rd International Symposium on Biomechanics in Sport allows me to sketch for you a brief history of the kinesiology program--as it is called at the University of Northern Colorado. As you might expect, the preparation for this presentation gave me the opportunity to learn more about the history of the program. I have my suspicions that there are some internal political purposes behind this invitation--to know and better appreciate the program--but that is all well and good. Too seldom do administrators in a university have the opportunity to learn in detail the history of a program and a field. As you know, on most campuses we central administrators are supposedly confined to some tower from which we send edicts--at least that is the mythology. In fact, we are often trapped by demands placed on us by external constituencies such as legislatures and super boards. We came into academia in order to serve our own intellectual interests and ultimately to serve the intellectual interests of our faculty colleagues. And that remains the case for virtually all of us. However, we are often to be found warring over policies imposed and policies to be developed than we are looking at the intellectual aspects of one of the disciplines in the university. For all those reasons, I am pleased to be here and to join you for a little while.