Greetings from the Chair

October 2024

 

Greetings fellow alumni and friends,

It has been quite some time since my last update, and we are well into the Fall 2024 semester. Homecoming is just around the corner October 17-20^th and our departmental reception will be on Saturday, Oct. 19^th from 10-noon.  I hope you will be able to join us.  This will be an excellent opportunity to catch up with other alumni and our faculty.

We’ve had a lot happen since the last letter including the graduation of the Class of 2024 with 131 new alumni from our department (who are hopefully receiving this communication for the first time)!  You can read more about the event and our majors of the year on our website.

 https://www.wm.edu/as/kinesiology/alumni/graduation/graduation-2024/

Over the summer, our faculty were involved in number of activities including offering a variety of in-person and on-line courses and multiple sections including Intro to the Human Body (Queen), Medical Terminology (Queen), Public Health (Menefee), Human Anatomy (Burnet), and Human Physiology (Harris).  Offering these courses in the summer helps our students get ahead or catch up on credits, allowing them to double major, take a lighter load during a sport season, or include study abroad during their academic career. In addition to traditional courses, many faculty are also providing research opportunities during the summer.  Adair Hall hosted over 17 students working in the labs with Profs. Deschenes, Caliguiri, Conrad, Harris, and Looft-Wilson on various projects many of whom received summer stipends through your generous support of various initiatives on campus for undergraduate research as well as grant funding to individual faculty.   

Research also occurred off-campus and primarily in Kenya.  Profs. Carrie Dolan and Julius Odhiambo continued their work with community health partners (CHP) to predict individual vaccine uptake and aggregate demand at CHP clinics in Narok Kenya along with two undergraduate students. Also in Kenya, Prof. Scott Ickes partnered with co-Reves Faculty Fellow, Prof. Alex Joose (Public Policy), in Naivasha to explore factors that hinder the effective implementation of exclusive breastfeeding to prevent childhood mortality.

 https://www.wm.edu/as/publicpolicy/news/alex-joosse-named-2024-reeves-faculty-fellow.php

Needless to say, despite the heat and the perceptions of slow summer’s in Williamsburg, the Kinesiology faculty are a busy bunch and, if you are interested, I have also provided a list of the recent publications from our faculty since the last update at the very end.

The final note that I’d like to share is that we are currently have two searches in process for three new faculty positions.  The department has really grown in the last 10 years and now we are beginning to catch up on faculty.  Two positions are to support our curriculum/research in human health and physiology and one is to support the curriculum/research in public health.  Links to the job ads are below.  If applicable, please apply or reach out to anyone you know who might be interested.

• Public Health https://jobs.wm.edu/postings/62055
• Human Physiology https://jobs.wm.edu/postings/62051

As always we love to hear from you and you can always provide updates via our Send Us Your News link.  Even better, you could provide your updates to us in person by joining us for homecoming.   Hope to see you there.  Go Tribe!

Send Us Your News

Sincerely,

Brennan Harris, Ph.D. (B.S. Kinesiology ’93)

Chair & Ken Kambis Professor

Department of Kinesiology

William & Mary

mbharr@wm.edu 

Publications: 

• Caligiuri, S. P., Gilchrist, J. A., Pierce, T. B., Austria, J. A., Hirst, B. C., Hirst, S. D., ... & Pierce, G. N. (2024). The Testing of Dietary Flaxseed in Order to Lower Blood Pressure in Hypertensive Populations. In Environmental Factors in the Pathogenesis of Cardiovascular Diseases (pp. 673-687). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
• Smith, A.C., Ghoshal, S., Centanni, S.W., Heyer, M.P., Corona, A., Wills, L., Andraka, E., Lei, Y., O’Connor, R.M., Caligiuri, S.P. and Khan, S. (2024). A master regulator of opioid reward in the ventral prefrontal cortex. Science, 384(6700), p.eadn0886.
• Blackstone, Nicole Tichenor; Battaglia, Kyra; Rodríguez-Huerta, Edgar; Bell, Brooke M; Decker Sparks, Jessica L; Cash, Sean B; Conrad, Zach; Nikkhah, Amin; Jackson, Bethany; Matteson, Julia; Gao, Shijun; Fuller, Kathy; Zhang, Fang Fang; Webb, Patrick. (2024). Diets cannot be sustainable without ensuring the well-being of communities, workers, and animals in food value chains. Nature Food (accepted).
• Drewnowski, Adam; Conrad, Zach. (2024). Pulse crops: nutrient density, affordability, and environmental impact. Frontiers in Nutrition, 11:1438369.
• Kowalski, Corina*; Dustin, Dakota; Ilayan, Alaa; Johnson, LuAnn K.; Belury, Martha; Conrad, Zach. (2024). Are people consuming the diets they say they are? Self-reported versus estimated adherence to low carbohydrate and low fat diets: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2007-2018. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (online ahead of print).
• Conrad, Zach; Wu, Songze;* Johnson, LuAnn K; Kun, Julia F;* Roy, Eric D; Gephart, Jessica A; Bezares, Nayla; Wiipongwii, Troy; Blackstone, Nicole Tichenor; Love, David C. (2024). Foodprint 2.0: A computational simulation model that estimates the agricultural resource requirements of diet patterns. PLOS One, 19:e0306097.
• Conrad, Zach; DiStaso, Chloe;* Korol, Madison;* Rose, Donald. (2024). Augmenting the national nutrition data system to promote diet sustainability analyses. Current Developments in Nutrition, 8:103793.
• Wiipongwii, Troy; Jennings, Lydia; Fritton, Ben; Rocchi, Joe; Kun, Julia; Nikonha, Powhatan Wané; Leu, Matthias; Conrad, Zach. (2024). IndigiFoodDB: A Database of Indigenous Foods, their Flavors, Nutrition, and Environmental Impact. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4694691.
• Rowe, Sarah;* Brady, Catherine;* Sarang, Rhea;* Wiipongwii, Troy; Leu, Matthias; Jennings, Lydia; Peterson, Tomalita; Boston, Juan; Roach, Beth; Phillips, Jessica; Conrad, Zach. (2024). Improving Indigenous food sovereignty through sustainable food production: a narrative review. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 8:1341146.
• Scherer, Laura; Tichenor Blackstone, Nicole; Conrad, Zach; Fulgoni, Victor; Mathers, John; van der Pols, Jolieke; Willett, Walter; Fantke, Peter; Milà i Canals, Llorenç; Pfister, Stephan; Stylianou, Katerina; Weidema, Bo; Jolliet, Olivier. (2024). Accounting for nutrition-related health impacts in food LCA: guidance from an expert workshop. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment (online ahead of print).
• Unger, Allison; Beal, Ty; Conrad, Zach; Pikosky, Matthew; Brown, Katie. (2024). Opportunities for consistent and holistic metrics to support food systems transformation: a summary of a symposium presented at Nutrition 2023. Current Developments in Nutrition, 8: 102129.
• Angelotti, Austin; Kowalski, Corina;* Johnson, LuAnn; Belury, Martha; Conrad, Zach. (2024). Restricted carbohydrate diets below 45% energy are not associated with risk of mortality in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999-2018. Frontiers in Nutrition, 11:1225674.
• Wei, C. C., Harris, M. B., Ye, M., Nicholls, A., Alkhatib, A., Dewi, L., ... & Kuo, C. H. (2024). Defecation after magnesium supplementation enhances cognitive performance in triathletes. Sports Medicine and Health Science.
• Mgongo, M., Ickes, S. B., Leyaro, B. J., Mboya, I. B., Grounds, S., Seiger, E. R., ... & Martin, S. L. (2024). Early Infant Feeding Practices among Women Engaged in Paid Work in Africa: A Systematic Scoping Review. Advances in Nutrition, 15(3), 100179.
• Looft-Wilson, R. C., Stechmann, J. K., Milenski, K. G., Shah, V. M., Kulkarni, P. G.*, Arif, A. B., ... & Rice, S. K. (2024). Myoendothelial feedback in mouse mesenteric resistance arteries is similar between the sexes, dependent on nitric oxide synthase, and independent of TPRV4. American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, 326(1), H190-H202.
• GBD Local and Small Area Estimation Family Planning Collaborators (Odhiambo, J. contributor) "Mapping heterogeneity in family planning indicators in Burkina Faso, Kenya, and Nigeria, 2000–2020." BMC medicine 22, no. 1 (2024): 38.