Aspirations for Ujima: Fortifying the Kinesiology Profession through a Social-Ecological Paradigm

ABSTRACT

In my address as the 41st Dudley A. Sargent lecturer, I urged my colleagues to prioritize recruiting, educating, retaining, and training the next generation of kinesiology faculty. With a keen interest in supporting the educational pursuits of Black students, I challenged current scholars to nurture future kinesiology professionals across the social-ecological model. I further highlighted the work of successful bridge programs aimed at honing the talent of undergraduate students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to assist in their entry and matriculation through the doctorate. Lastly, I presented the Connections of Success Tree to illustrate pairs of intrapersonal and interpersonal characteristics and relationships that can lead to responsible strengthening and diversification of the field through collective work.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity
• HBCU recruitment
• socialization
• higher education
• graduate education
• doctorate pipelines

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Wilhelmina K. Dansby Woodruff served as a secondary educator for 40 years primarily in Toccoa, GA. Trained as a mathematician with a teaching endorsement from Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University), she later completed graduate degrees in science education and special education at Atlanta University. The mother of eight was dedicated to community engagement and improvement.

2. Daniel Kenneth Delk, Sr. was an American entrepreneur and a veteran of the United States Army. A native of Marietta, Georgia and father of six, Kenneth resided in Southwest Atlanta (SWATS) where he served the community through his craftsmanship as a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning technician.

3. Black and African American are used interchangeably to denote people of the African Diaspora within the United States.

4. GoDoBe was the motto for Atlanta’s Benjamin Elijah Mays High School during the principalship of Mr. Ron Brown. The acronym encouraged the students to do the following: Go somewhere, Do something, Be somebody.