Kines Moves the World

This year, the School of Kinesiology Center for Global Opportunities was able to safely reinstate semesterlong education abroad programs. Students were excited to participate, and traveled to the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom for study.

In addition to the semester-long experiences, Kinesiology offered two faculty-led programs to meet the academic needs and professional interests of our health science and Sport Management students.

Over the course of a month, health science students from Kinesiology, Nursing, and Engineering traveled across Italy for “Art and Anatomy in the Italian Renaissance,” led by Dr. Melissa Gross, associate professor of Movement Science. Through visits to museums and historical sites in Florence, Bologna, Milan, Padua, and Rome, students applied their knowledge of musculoskeletal anatomy and improved their observational skills in the context of Early Modern Italian art. They learned how body representations in both art and science were linked to cultural norms in the past and how that relationship is still relevant today.

After completing the course, students were able to explain how anatomical knowledge was discovered, learned, and shared through art and science; observe and describe details of visual phenomena with greater acuity through sustained looking and critical thinking; understand how mediated looking affects our understanding of representations of the body; articulate the parallels between represented bodies in Early Modern art and contemporary tools used in health science training; and develop greater awareness of personal biases and historical/cultural perspectives. Sport Management students spent ten days in the UK for “Managing Sport Business Culture in the United Kingdom,” led by Sport Management faculty Kelli Donahue and Ron Wade. The class visited London, Edinburgh, and Manchester to learn about British sport industry operations, the deep historical and cultural significance of many British sport programs, and the growth and expansion of American sports abroad.

Students visited one to two sport organizations, venues, or agencies per day. They toured some of the UK’s most prominent sport sites, often meeting with leadership teams to expand their knowledge of sport marketing, partnership, and event operations. Highlights included Tottenham Stadium, McLaren Racing, Lord’s Cricket, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, St. Andrews, Etihad Stadium, and Wimbledon.

Kinesiology students continue to benefit greatly from the global opportunities made possible by the generosity of our donors, Bruce and Claudia Resnikoff, Dale and Beverly Ulrich, and Carl and Joan Kreager. Please visit the school’s Instagram account, instagram. com/umkines, for more visual representations of our students’ adventures abroad. n

Previous page, top, clockwise from left: SM students visit Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, McLaren Racing, and Etihad Stadium. Austin Mital-Skiff/Michigan Kinesiology. Previous page, bottom, clockwise from left: Health science students on a rooftop overlooking Rome, at an anatomical wax collection in Bologna, and at the Milan Duomo. Austin Mital-Skiff/Michigan Kinesiology. This page, top: SM juniors Hannah, Hallie, and Jordin at the Dolomites in Northern Italy. Courtesy photo. This page, bottom: MVS junior Collette and her University College Dublin classmates enjoy the great outdoors. Courtesy photo. | MOVEMENT | FALL 2022 21