War Memorial Hall supports spaces for healthy minds and bodies
You know, exercise is such an accessible tool that can help students focus, get their mind right for their academic purposes and academic success, and in general, well-being, making them feel just rejuvenated, invigorated, and a lot of people identify themselves by their hobbies and exercise and their sport, and that really helps define who they are. And so being able to find what that's going to look like at Virginia Tech and then find people that you sync up with this is a great place to do it. So our department of human nutrition foods and exercise spans basic science to community and behavioral interventions. We've about quadrupled our space for conducting human clinical research, we have state-of-the-art facilities for doing human body composition assessment, we have a radio frequency shielded room to do sophisticated neurophysiology studies, and extended ability to do measurements of human energetics. One of the unique natures of being in War Memorial Hall is that we are just a floor or two up from recreational sports. We have a shared mission and that we're both interested in health and wellness of our student populations, so it's been kind of a long-term dream to have a renovated space to really increase our capabilities. In terms of the renovation in the front of the house, which is where the School of Education is, the people that are here are faculty who specifically are serving the undergraduate programs in teacher education. From my perspective, I see my office as being not only a place where I'm going to talk to students and do the business of education, but also offer kind of a hospitable place, right, that feels comfortable. Those things are so important to instruction and teaching.