GSA Helps You Move
By Stephanie Laughton, VP of Campus Affairs AY18-19
Pretty much any medical journal (or fitness blog) you look through now has articles published linking fitness, mood, and productivity. The general conclusion of all that literature is that maintaining a healthy lifestyle, regardless of where that places your BMI, will help you keep healthy and happy in life and more productive at work. Central to maintaining a healthy lifestyle is ensuring that you are moving your body. For adults, the CDC recommends two or more days a week of muscle strengthening activities plus at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity. In our goal of supporting the holistic well-being of all graduate students, GSA has worked for years to help get people moving!
Practically since its inception, GSA has been supporting routes to help our constituents move on a regular basis. The GSO’s (the Graduate Student Organization, aka what GSA was called before we became GSA) budget from AY 1993-94 revealed that at the time, we were sponsoring the “Grad Softball League” and “Grad Volleyball League” -- It was probably sponsored before then, but I gave up looking through the paper archives in the GSA office once I hit the 25 years ago mark! -- This Grad League grew into what we recognize as GSA Sports today. GSA Sports runs mainly during the summer to supplement the months when the campus-wide intramural (IM) sports leagues slow down. It is open to all graduate students to come and hang out. Between 1993 and 2018, it had shrunk down to a summer softball league, but in the summer of 2018, reconstruction of the fields fueled an expansion into other sports. We are happy to report the expansion was a success and has set the new standard for how the League will be run in the future. Kudos to Bret Vukoder (PhD student in the Dept. of English) for all his work with the sports league this summer!
Beyond supporting and funding just IM sports, another dig back through our old budgets reveals that GSA has been subsidizing exercise passes since at least 2001 for students to get access to discounted GroupX classes. It was even a recommendation in the GSA Strategic Plan to continue the sponsorship of these classes to make them more affordable for students! However, since AY 2016-17, GroupX classes were made free for all CMU students at the recommendation of the Task Force on the CMU Experience and so GSA sponsorship of exercise passes was not needed anymore.
Since GSA’s direct sponsorship of GroupX classes ended, we have maintained a relationship with CMU Athletics by continuing to appoint an Athletics Liaison and meeting with Pattye Stragar, the Fitness Operations Manager, to ensure graduate student needs are heard by CMU Athletics. The relationship between graduate students and GroupX has continued even without GSA’s assistance as grad students step up to become GroupX instructors themselves. For instance, take Willie Neiswanger who is working on his PhD in Machine Learning and also teaches the Plyometrics & Strength GroupX class. When talking about his class, Willie says, “I hope people who attend my class learn to push themselves more than they normally would while exercising, and that they have fun.” Rebecca Tanzer, a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering had a similar take on her classes (Boot Camp, Cardio and Core, and Barre Burn) “I am happy when my participants leave sweaty and sore; I want them to remember me the next day. But most importantly I hope they leave with even just a little brighter outlook than when they entered my class.” Fun and sweat, what more could you ask for?
This year, GSA is proud to pilot a new initiative to help encourage our constituents to move called the “Move”mber Graduate Fitness Challenge. “Move”mber, running for eight weeks, from 14 October 2018 to 7 December 2018, is a competition open to all graduate students to log the days they are active (in whatever form that takes for them). Based on the number of total days they log, participants will be entered into a drawing category to win a prize pack of their choice. We don’t care if you are an avid biker, intrepid runner, or yoga enthusiast, we have a prize selection for you.
GSA is always looking to expand our support of graduate student movement at CMU. Beyond GSA Sports, exercise passes, and “Move”mber, we are always looking for new stuff. Be sure to reach out if you have a suggestion for what GSA can do in the future!
Just keep swimming! (After all, that is a kind of movement too!)