Ball State Alumnus Magazine, Premier Program: Giving License to Empower

In 1987, with only one class and three undergraduate students, Ron Davis implemented the Adapted Physical Education program at Ball State. In less than 20 years, he has taken the department from its humble beginnings to thriving heights. By
challenging the norms of the current curriculum and insisting on a system of service learning, Davis has created a premier physical education program geared toward helping individuals with disabilities.

"I would like to think we're in the best position in the state," Davis says. "I hope other people recognize that as well."

Now aimed at undergraduate and graduate students alike, the Adapted P.E. program allows students to obtain an adapted physical education teaching license. The license, considered an add-on for physical education teachers, gives
BSU students the knowledge and experience to work with disabled individuals. According to Davis, the training puts them ahead of other P.E. teachers in the state.

"Most of the public schools in Indiana don't have a second class for kids with disabilities, which means these kids are being serviced in general P.E. classes by a P.E. teacher who usually doesn't have special training," Davis says. "Students from
our program have the training to teach these students and an advantage during a job interview."

In less than two years, Davis expects the licensure to become a mandatory component of the statewide physical education program. When that occurs, every Indiana university that offers a physical education degree will have to address the combined standards and provide courses in adapted physical education.

"What's going to happen is that the curriculum is going to infuse most of the adapted content into the general curriculum," Davis says. "Not every university has the set-up that we have here, so we see an opportunity to help with that. I see a vision of distance learning classes that students from other universities can take and even some of us going to those universities for a week or so during the summer and conducting in-service programs, or running some training clinics."

Until the licensure is adopted into the standard curriculum, Ball State students will continue to gain experience with disabled individuals through two required courses and the Ability Challenge Program. In the voluntary ACP program, Davis says students have the opportunity to gain professional experience by working with individuals with disabilities through structured activities and events.

"The Ability Challenge Program offers opportunities on an ongoing and weekly basis for students to teach and assess kids," Davis says. "What students are studying in their adapted physical education classes is being reinforced through these opportunities."

Organized by students in the Physical Education Leadership Program, the Ability Challenge Program includes Th ursday Night Recreation (TNR), Movement Opportunity Venues for Everyone (MOVE), and Adapted Water Activities for Everyone (AWAVE).

In the TNR program, leadership students conduct weekly meetings to plan the agenda for participants. TNR activities include wheelchair basketball, power soccer, wallyball, bowling, and goal ball.

Students who attend TNR include those with and without disabilities. In some instances, students majoring in special education or similar disciplines participate in the weekly activities to better understand and relate to individuals with disabilities.
Ball State's Disabled Student Services provides fi nancial backing for various activities.

"For about ten years we held annual Wheel-a-thons, which were coordinated through Disabled Services," Davis says. "We worked with them on that project, and it was a very successful fundraiser.

Unlike the TNR program, the MOVE and AWAVE programs are geared toward rehabilitation. The focus of MOVE is to improve physical fitness and motor skills through group games and sports on Friday afternoons, while the purpose of AWAVE is to incorporate prescribed therapy with water exercises.

"I'm not a therapist, but we do use prescription exercises in the water," says Davis. "We use the water to build balance and coordination. It's not a learn-to-swim program. It's using the water to facilitate exercises."

Those who have experienced the program speak to its success. For Ball State alumnus Aaron Davis, rehabilitation became the way to reform the right side of his body after enduring a massive brain injury his senior year of high school.

"I had what's called an arterial venal malformation, which is a mass of blood vessels in my brain that were supposed to absorb back into my body as a baby, but they didn't. Eventually they couldn't take the pressure and on April 18, 1996 they burst," Aaron Davis says.

After he collapsed and remained in a coma for nearly a month, doctors predicted that Davis' chances of survival were slim. But he overcame the odds. He awoke
and eventually learned how to walk again and write with his left hand. He attended
occupational, physical, and speech therapy to help with the process. Within the next
few years, he graduated from high school and went on to receive both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Ball State.

Like other disabled students at Ball State, Aaron Davis used the AWAVE program to fulfill his Physical Education: Fitness/Wellness course (PEFWL) requirements. For three semesters, the program helped him improve from his long-term paralysis. "My right side has problems, but the program helped me with movement," he says. "The resistance with the water made movement easier because I didn't have the added stress on my body.

Leslie Klingenberg, from Gaston, also has had first-hand experience with AWAVE. Her mother, Annette Klingenber, says that AWAVE has helped her daughter's strength and movement. Nearly 20 years ago, Leslie suffered from a brain injury after being involved in a car accident when she was just six years old. Now 25, she has participated in the AWAVE and TNR programs for more than ten years.

"The program has really helped Leslie physically and mentally. There is a great atmosphere there," Klingenberg says. "In AWAVE, Leslie is able to work one-on-one with someone in order to increase her strength and flexibility. She used to be involved in therapy through Ball Memorial Hospital, but once that ended, AWAVE became an extension of that therapy."

According to Ron Davis, it is opportunities like AWAVE that have helped the Adapted P.E. program succeed. "We have a rich history of serving individuals with
disabilities both on-campus and in the community," Davis says. "It has really been a program that has come from pretty modest beginnings to what we are now. In the history of the program, I've seen it grow from one student with no service learning to a great deal of service learning and an average of 35 to 40 students enrolled per year."