Starting this summer, students will once again be able to run, whack, dance and swim their ways to credits.
Activities classes are returning to ASU's Tempe campus this summer after a one-year hiatus. Two classes will be offered this summer and six more are coming in the fall semester.
The offered activities include aerobics, aquatics, racquet sports, physical conditioning and golf.
Classes will be under the control of the Department of Exercise and Wellness, based at the Polytechnic campus.
"We are responding to student interest and staff interest who wanted these classes," Department Chair Bill Stone said.
The classes, which for the past year were only offered at the Polytechnic campus, will be two credits each and count for pass/fail credit.
This summer only aerobics and physical conditioning will be offered, Stone said.
The popular physical education classes disappeared after the kinesiology department decided to abandon them for credit in fall 2006, Stone said.
"The classes were very popular," Stone added. "They filled up right after pre-registration."
Psychology sophomore Josh Courtney played basketball in a physical education class his freshman year.
"It was fun to go there and have a guaranteed game," Courtney said.
The kinesiology department offered approximately 50 classes in activities ranging from rock climbing to tennis before it decided to end the program, Stone said.
The decision was made because of a lack of available teachers, a department official said.
"Our department came out [to the Polytechnic campus] and the people who could teach activities classes came out here with us," said Dolores Hauptman, academic adviser for the Department of Exercise and Wellness. "But people asked for the classes so we brought some back to Tempe."
There could be problems with students finding the classes online, Hauptman said.
The new registration system fails to specify which class is which, and places the classes at the bottom of a long list of other activity classes on other campuses. They are also no longer under the KIN heading. Instead the classes are labeled as EXW 105.
"We will see if they are successful," Hauptman said.
There are also problems with funding the classes for next fall, Stone said.
"All of the funding has gravitated to the Tempe campus and the provost," Stone said. "Funding will come directly from [Provost Elizabeth Capaldi] to the departments."
Stone said the new funding process was a double-edged sword.
"This could be good news; no middleman," he said. "The bad news is that nobody knows what the funding is going to be like."
Because the department does not know how much money they will get, they are unable to hire instructors for the classes, Stone added.
Instructors for the fall semester should have been found by March, he added.
Reach the reporter at: john.dougherty@asu.edu.
