American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance - AAHPERD

2012 Candidates for AAHPERD President-Elect

Stephen C. Jefferies
Professor of Physical Education, School and Public Health
Central Washington University, Ellensburg

Steve Jefferies' Platform Statement

Steve Jefferies has been a professor in the Department of Physical Education, School and Public Health at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, WA, since 1986. In addition to teaching, he created summer physical education camps, an annual statewide workshop for PE teachers, a community unicycling and juggling club, and served 8 years as a school board director. In 2000, he helped to create one of the first online physical education master's degree programs in the country.

Jefferies received his Physical Education Teaching Certificate from St. Lukes' College in Devon, England in 1973 and his B.Ed. in 1974 from the University of Exeter. He taught public school physical education before completing his MS and PhD degrees at the University of Oregon. Jefferies spent a year in the USSR studying the youth sports system, and after graduation helped to develop materials for the American Coaching Effectiveness Program.

In 1999, Jefferies was recognized as the University's Distinguished Professor of Public Service. He twice served as Vice-President of PE for the Washington AHPERD and simultaneously served as WAHPERD and NASPE presidents. Recently he served on AAHPERD's Vision I and Vision II committees.

Jefferies is the creator and publisher of www.pelinks4u.org, the monthly online magazine for physical education professionals. He has written monthly online editorials for the past 12 years, edited several books, and published over 25 journal articles. He has made over 70 professional presentations throughout the country. Working with NASPE, Jefferies created the NASPE-Forum and a national database of physical education faculty in higher education. Most recently, he helped to facilitate NASPE's pe2020 initiative that resulted in the submission of close to 2,000 visionary essays, a one-day forum at the San Diego convention, and proposals for reimagining the future of public school physical education.

Gale A. Wiedow
Associate Professor of Physical Education and Exercise Science
Dakota State University, Madison, SD

Gale Wiedow's Platform Statement

Gale Wiedow is a Life Member of AAHPERD, having first joined the Alliance in 1974 while a student at the University of Northern Iowa. He attended his first national convention that same year and estimates that he has attended over 50 state, district and/or national conventions since 1974.

Wiedow completed both his undergraduate and Master of Arts degrees at the University of Northern Iowa, both in physical education. During service in the U.S. Army between degrees, he was stationed with the 553rd Military Police Company at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he served as NCOIC for Training and Education at the Area Confinement Facility. Following completion of the MA degree, Wiedow was appointed as the Intramural Coordinator at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. During his employment at UNL, he completed the PhD degree in Administration, Curriculum and Instruction, with all elective work and his doctoral dissertation focusing on HPER. Wiedow has also taught at Indiana University, the University of South Dakota, and at Dakota State University.

During a professional career spanning over 40 years, Wiedow has served in numerous leadership positions including President, Treasurer and Executive Director at the state level, and Treasurer, Executive Director and President-Elect at the district level (a job change took him out of the district prior to the end of his term). He served as President and Board of Governors representative for the American Association for Leisure and Recreation (AALR) and has served on a variety of committees at the state, district and national levels, including two terms on the Alliance Strategic Planning Committee, a term on the Alliance Finance Committee, and he currently serves on the Finance Workgroup of the Organizational Planning Committee. He served as department chair of HPER at the University of South Dakota (USD), where he was a tenured full professor and also held the position of Associate Dean for Research and Technology. Wiedow was a 2003 inductee into the North American Society of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport and Dance Professionals and has received numerous other awards including the Honor Award from AAHPERD, AALR, Central District and South Dakota AHPERD. He was a 2011 recipient of the R. Tait McKenzie Award and is a state PE Teacher of the Year at the college/university level.

From 2003 to 2007, Wiedow served as National Program Director for the National Youth Sports Program (NYSP), a federally funded summer day-camp program for economically disadvantaged and underserved youth hosted on college/university campuses. Prior to assuming the national director's position, he served as a national evaluator for the program visiting over 125 college and university program sites in over 30 states. He also led the conversion of data collection for the program from checklists and narrative reports to an integrated national database application. Congress cut funding for NYSP after almost 40 years of service to our country's youth.

Other titles Wiedow has held or currently holds are editor, webmaster, advisor, mentor, husband, father, grandfather and friend ? not necessarily in that order!