Through the generous support of our alumni and donors, the School of Kinesiology is advancing excellence and making its mark on campus and around the world.

2020-21 By the Numbers

• 376 total donors
• 826 gifts given to our school
• 74% of total donors gave $100 or less
• 261 gifts made to the Kinesiology COVID Fund
• 99 scholarships & awards offered
• 87 student recipients of scholarships & awards
• $457,626 total student support given
• 69% increase in support given over the last 5 years

Kinesiology Building

In December 2020, the U-M Board of Regents officially approved the School of Kinesiology Building name for the former E. H. Kraus Natural Science Building. In January 2021, we began our first in-person classes in our new home.

We could not have achieved this amazing milestone without donor support—thank you for helping us get to the finish line!

We're looking forward to giving you a tour of the Kinesiology Building at our Homecoming celebration on Friday, September 24. Please save the date! In the meantime, you can take a virtual tour via our short four-video series at myumi.ch/7ZDQB.

Helping Our Community Through COVID-19

Gifts to the Kinesiology Grad/Undergrad Emergency Aid (COVID) Fund helped our students and faculty transition to online, hybrid, and public health-informed in-person classes. This included securing additional PPE and hand sanitizing stations, creating a pop-up recording studio, and purchasing laptops and webcams for graduate student instructors.

Additionally, graduate and undergraduate students were able to request one-time funding to offset costs or setbacks they experienced as a result of COVID-19. Donor gifts helped support:

• Students with family income changes due to job loss, illness, or death
• Emergency tuition assistance
• Emergency living expense assistance (rent, utilities, groceries, etc.)
• Emergency medical expense assistance
• Technology (laptop, wi-fi, etc.) needed for online classes
• Additional PPE (face shield, etc.

For this year only, faculty could also request funding from the Donor Innovation Grants to bring their research back up to speed after an extended pause due to the pandemic. Donor gifts helped support:

• Undergraduate research assistants
• Data collection and analysis
• Summer funding for PhD students to work on their dissertations
• Research participant coordination

Student Support

One of the core goals of our school is to grow our students into the next generation of thinkers, doers, leaders, and game-changers. Donor support helps give them opportunities to challenge themselves both academically and personally.

The Awareness to Action: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion in Sport speaker series is a student-led, donor-funded initiative to increase DEI efforts and awareness in Sport Management. The inaugural series focused on the history of inequity and exclusion in sport, encouraging and prioritizing intersectionality, and the benefits of diverse teams. Speakers included:

• Erik Bakich, U-M Baseball head coach
• Dr. Louis Moore, Grand Valley State University associate professor of history
• Marissa Pollick, attorney and U-M lecturer
• Erik Robeznieks, U-M Adaptive Sports & Fitness project manager
• Joyce Wilson-Eder, Big Ten Conference Advisory Board member

The donor-funded Concussion Scholars Program gives students the opportunity to work with Michigan Concussion Center researchers. This year, students assisted with baseline concussion testing for U-M varsity athletes and helped analyze patient data. Undergraduate student Melvin Darwin was part of the first Concussion Scholars cohort. "I was not in the position to take on unpaid research, so this program made my work with the Concussion Center possible," he said. "I worked alongside great PIs and research assistants who are doing cutting-edge research central to concussion science."