Wake Forest Magazine June 2003 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

C a m p u s C h r o n i c l e
Healthy history
No other department on
the Reynolda Campus
can simultaneously claim as
much stability and as much
change as Health and Exercise
Science.
It has had only three chairs
in the forty-seven years Wake
Forest has been in Winston-
Salem, and all three are still
around, along with many of the
original faculty. Every faculty
member it has tenured in the
past quarter century remains
in the department–a record of
collective longevity probably
unrivaled at the University.
At the same time, the
department’s mission has
morphed over the years from
physical education teacher
training taught by instructors
and part-time coaches to
research by doctorate holders
on lifestyle interventions in
chronic-disease prevention
and rehabilitation, along with
clinical programs and health
professions preparation. It
generates more grant support
from external sources–and is
funded at a higher level per
professor–than any other
department on campus.
On the Old Campus,
physical education was part of
a combined department with
athletics under the directorship
of Jim Weaver. After World
War II, Weaver (who would
go on to become the first commissioner
of the newly formed
ACC in 1954) hired Jim Long
to redesign the required physical
education classes and establish
a program for the training of
teachers in health, physical
education, recreation, and
coaching.
Within three years, Long
hired Marge Crisp to conduct a
women’s intramural program,
Dot Casey as her assistant, and
Harold Barrow to teach in the
areas of philosophy, administration,
and tests and measurements.
Casey and Crisp, who
still live near the Reynolda
Campus, formed the Women’s
Recreation Association and
offered practically every club
activity and sport imaginable
for coeds. Barrow, a Missouri
native who was the first–and
for twenty years, the only–
doctorate holder in the department,
also was an assistant
basketball coach. Gene Hooks
(’50) joined the staff as an
instructor in physical education
and baseball coach.
Hooks would later serve as
director of athletics from 1964
until his retirement in 1992.
Just as Wake Forest was
preparing to open the new
campus, the trustees approved
dividing physical education
and athletics into separate
departments. Long resigned to
accept another position and
Barrow was named chair of
physical education. One of
Barrow’s first hires was Leo
Ellison, who taught and
coached swimming and ran
the intramural program for
more than forty years.
Until the late 1960s, “P.E.
was looked upon as games,”
said Barrow, who at ninetythree
years old still lives on
Faculty Drive with his wife of
thirty-two years, Kate (’53),
Harold Barrow (left), Paul Ribisl, Bill Hottinger
who was Jim Weaver’s widow.
“Then we began to be looked
upon as science.”
The acquisition of a treadmill
in 1967 was a watershed
moment in the department’s
evolution. That enabled Barrow
to hire Mike Pollock, a doctoral
graduate in exercise physiology
from the University of Illinois.
“When we got that treadmill
our prestige went up,” said
Barrow.
Although teaching remained
(and remains to this day) a priority
in faculty hiring decisions,
the doctorate and a proclivity
for research began to inform
those decisions much more
centrally. Pollock’s hiring established
an Illinois connection
that would prove central to the
department’s development.
When a faculty position opened
in 1970, Pollock suggested a
4 W ake Forest Magazine