Students pose in front of Blarney Castle. L to R: Henry Siegel, Bridget McNay , Amanda Magri, Jennifer Dunphy, Connor Glynn, Danielle Hunt, Ashley Bovat, Megan Patterson, Allison Bancroft, Courtney Castellano, and Victoria Ruggiero.
WESTFIELD – Twelve Westfield State University students, supervised by Holly Noun, chair of the movement science department, traveled to Galway, Killarney, and Dublin, Ireland as part of the course Irish Sports Science and Culture.
The course explored the various aspects of sports and physical activity in Ireland including health promotion, epidemiology (incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases in communities), and exercise physiology. Students met for one hour per week on campus during the spring semester and completed two weeks of additional work in Ireland in June.
According to Noun, the course focused on Irish sport science because she felt her students could benefit from the country’s attitude towards recreation.
“The Irish government is supporting sports at all levels as a pathway to health and wellness for its citizens,” Noun said. “This is an important model for the students to experience, as we face many of the same health issues in the United States.”
For student Megan Patterson ’15 of Deltona, FL, the length of the travel offered a solution to a study abroad dilemma.
“The movement science major makes it a little tricky to do a semester abroad because a lot of our classes have pre-requisites that are only available fall or spring semesters, so missing one semester could be a big setback time-wise,” Patterson said. “This course gave me the chance to go abroad without missing a whole semester.”
Students attended lectures at Ireland’s National University in Galway and at Dublin City University on a variety of topics including the Irish medical model, rehabilitation, and biomechanics.
Patterson said she learned the most from participating in MedEx, a program at Dublin City University that creates workouts for people with different illnesses.
“When observing the classes it was so amazing to see the friendships these people built through the physical activity programs,” Patterson said.
According to Patterson, who heard success stories from the patients, the key to the program was combining socialization with exercise.
“With a community approach to overall health, people can become educated and also have opportunities to be part of something social that also benefits their physical health,” Patterson said.
This community approach had a special appeal to Patterson as she said she will apply it to her future patients.
“In the future I will definitely use this approach when encouraging my patients to step outside the box and become more involved in types of activities they may have never thought of,” Patterson said.
In addition to the lectures, students explored the cultural context of Ireland by visiting historically relevant sites including the Cliffs of Moher, the Dingle Coast, and the Gaelic Sports Museum. Keeping in theme with course, many of the excursions required a little sweat.
“I loved how our trip coordinator included so many active experiences for us,” Patterson said, speaking most fondly of a bike ride through the Killarney National Park. “It so incredible how breathtaking that country is.”
Students also participated in the Gaelic Games Experience, an afternoon dedicated to learning traditional Gaelic games including handball, hurling, and Gaelic football.
For Noun, the highlight of the course was reading her students’ reflective projects and discovering just how much they learned.
“Seeing the degree to which the students truly understand the integration of culture and sport in Ireland, and how they learned and experienced it, and the impact of experiencing another culture with their classmates has been extraordinary for me,” Noun said.
