CPASS Sport Management Associate Professor Gonzalo Bravo was recently nominated to serve on the American Kinesiology Association Board of Directors. His appointment will run from 2022-2025. The major goal of AKA is to promote, enhance and unify the field of kinesiology.
Bravo was nominated to the board in February 2022. “Serving in AKA has been a real privilege, not only to deepen my understanding of the field of kinesiology but also for the unique opportunity to meet many great faculty and administrators within the field of kinesiology,” he said.
Previously, Bravo participated in the group’s Leadership Institute fellowship in 2020. “Although I had heard about AKA, the truth was I did not know much about it. Dr. Dana Brooks, former CPASS Dean, introduced to me this organization and encouraged me to participate in the AKA Institute fellowship,” he said. Bravo applied to the AKA Leadership Institute fellowship and was selected along with ten other faculty in the country to become the first class of this initiative.
AKA launched the Leadership Institute in 2019 with the aim to train and provide a network to faculty who serve or aspire to serve in leadership positions in academic units in kinesiology. The 12-month leadership training program included mentorship on topics such as the background of the field of kinesiology, budget models, diversity, equity and inclusion, shared governance, entrepreneurship and innovation. In 2020, Bravo was invited to serve on the AKA publications committee.
“I strongly recommend other faculty to get involved with AKA. At times our focus in our discipline prevents us to see the big picture of the larger discipline we belong to. The more we understand what others do helps us to increase our ability to do interdisciplinary collaboration,” Bravo said.
Since 2007, AKA has gathered faculty and leaders of academic programs across the country to share their experiences in the field of kinesiology. Over the years, the field of kinesiology has evolved to include academic disciplines that study the different facets of human movement and their impact on health, society, and the quality of life.
Today, there are more than 800 academic programs across the United States that offer degrees in the field of kinesiology including exercise science, physical education teacher education, sport management, athletic training, sport medicine, socio-cultural analysis of sport, sport coaching, sport and exercise psychology and other health-related fields.