Keynote Speakers Set for June 2019 AIESEP Conference at Adelphi Campus

A United Nations official and four keynote speakers are now booked for the 2019 International Association for Physical Education in Higher Education (AIESEP) International Conference on the Adelphi campus, said Emilia Zarco, M.D., chair of the Ammon School’s Department of Health and Sport Sciences (HSS).

The 2019 event—themed “Building Bridges for Physical Activity and Sport”—will be the third time Adelphi has hosted the AIESEP Conference, 1998 and 1985 being the previous years, said Dr. Zarco and Ron Feingold, Ph.D., Adelphi’s local committee co-chairs.

“I believe three times is tops for any U.S. university,” Dr. Feingold noted. Adelphi’s latest selection was influenced by its having put together “two very good conferences in the past” and by its proximity to New York City, he said.

Ramu Damodaran, deputy director for partnerships and public engagement in the United Nations’ Department of Public Information’s Outreach division and chief of the UN’s Academic Impact initiative, will deliver the welcome speech on opening day, June 19, 2019.

The keynoters will address various subthemes. Katie Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., associate professor with the University of Auckland’s School of Curriculum and Pedagogy, will focus on “Physical Education and Physical Literacy,” for instance, while Olajide Williams, M.D., chief of staff of neurology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, will talk about “Physical Activity and Public Health.”

Sarah Doolittle, Ed.D., HSS professor and the scientific committee chair for the 2019 AIESEP event, said that Dr. Williams, better known nationally as the “Hip Hop Doc,” has documented that the rapping of the hip-hop artist can be an effective pedagogic tool. He founded Hip-Hop Public Health to foster positive health behavior change through the power of hip-hop music, empowering youth with the knowledge to make healthier choices and combat diabetes and childhood obesity.

Dr. Fitzpatrick, who has spoken extensively on the need for better sex education in schools in her country, was the lead writer for the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s revised policy on sexuality education in 2014–2015.

Paul Wright, Ph.D., EC Lane and MN Zimmerman Endowed Professor with Northern Illinois University’s Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, will address the subtheme “Social-Emotional Learning Through Physical Activity and Sport,” and Carla Luguetti, Ph.D., lecturer in physical education and sport pedagogy at two universities in Brazil, will discuss “Physical Education Teacher Education and Youth Development.”

Dr. Wright specializes in Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR), an instructional model that was also featured at the Ammon School-hosted 2017 TPSR Alliance Conference in New York. Dr. Luguetti’s area of expertise is activist approaches for working in sport contexts with youth from socially vulnerable backgrounds.

Dr. Feingold, HSS professor emeritus, former Ammon School dean (2005–2009) and a former AIESEP president (1998–2006), estimated that the conference would draw more than 400 attendees. “AIESEP has a long history in leadership around the world in higher education, physical activity, research and world peace through spot,” he said.