By: Matthew Kondrat, News Editor
Bellarmine’s exercise science major is splitting into two different tracks, which will significantly lessen the amount of exercise science courses needed for graduation. A nutrition minor is also being added, as well as a program that will allow students to get a master’s degree in health science in five years.
The two tracks differ primarily in which of the upper-level exercise science courses are required.
For sports performance, requirements include classes in motor learning and principles of athletic conditioning.
For health and wellness, requirements include classes in health behavior and community wellness.
Department Chair Dr. Sara Mahoney said this change should lessen the heavy course load for exercise science majors.
“Right now, our degree requires over 50 hours just in exercise science courses,” Mahoney said. “It’s been pretty demanding, especially as a lot of our students are also pre-physical therapy and they’re trying to get those requirements in.”
Senior exercise science major Zacko Rightmire said: “There’s a lot of classes in exercise science program, like community wellness, research methods, or principles of athletic conditioning that are skewed towards one end of the health and wellness spectrum. And its such a broad field because it’s so new, and a lot of students don’t have any interest in principles of athletic conditioning if they want to organize a community wellness intervention for kidney disease.”
Rightmire said he thinks students’ grades will improve because they will be more invested in the classes required for them.
Mahoney said these changes will provide majors more flexibility.
“So this will actually reduce the exercise science specific courses just to 39 hours, so students will have a little bit more elective space,” Mahoney added.
Another new addition is a track designed to provide students a five year Master’s Degree of Health Science.
“Our exercise science students can apply to the program in their junior year, begin taking graduate level courses during their senior year, and then in four years they will have their bachelor’s, and in one additional year they will have a master’s in health science,” Mahoney said.
A new nutrition minor, which will give students foundational knowledge in nutrition was approved by the Faculty Council in March.
Mahoney said this new minor grew primarily out of student interest.
“We were doing our advising, and many times, every semester, I have had students say ‘Well, what about nutrition? Do you guys have any courses in nutrition?’ And currently, there’s only one course in the whole university for nutrition. While it gets covered in little pieces in some other courses we didn’t really have any structured nutrition program,” she said.
Said Rightmire, “As of right now, nutrition is such a big part of health and wellness, which is under the huge umbrella of exercise science, and the fact that we only have one nutrition class right now really doesn’t do it justice.”
Six additional courses were added which range from nutrition and obesity to community nutrition.
“It gives students kind of an introduction to all kinds of nutrition topics, community nutrition, lifespan nutrition, and this whole minor is housed in the exercise science department, but is open to any student,” Mahoney said.
Rightmire said he appreciates the new minor.
“I think the new nutrition minor is a good thing, I think most exercise science majors should get a minor in nutrition, but I also think some of those classes should be requirements for the exercise science major,” he said.
The new tracks and new classes for the nutrition minor will begin in the fall 2016 semester.