Health and Human Development Newsletter
Greetings, Health and Human Development Alumni, Students, Friends, and Family!
Welcome back to the 2026 HHD newsletter! We hope you enjoy reading the highlights from faculty, students, staff, and alumni as much as we enjoy sharing them. With full disclosure, this past year has been a difficult one on several levels, ranging from state budget woes to external threats to higher education. However, I am grateful that we can pause and reflect on some of the great accomplishments that our HHD team achieved this year despite the barriers. Further, thank you to our faculty, staff, students, and alumni, who continue to support one another and who directly contribute to the pursuit of growing supportive community spaces in public health, recreation, kinesiology, sport, physical education and beyond.
There is much to celebrate this year as you will read in the following sections. We had two highly successful accreditation visits for two of our programs in Public Health and Recreation Management and Leadership. We had three of our faculty nominated for prestigious teaching awards this year. Further, our HHD staff continue to shine. Many of you know our Department Manager, Sue Hutchings, who was a graduate of the Recreation program and who has worked for Western for over 30 years (13+ years for HHD). Sue will be celebrated at Western’s Celebration of Excellence Awards in May as she was chosen as this year’s Outstanding Classified Staff award winner! We also recently onboarded Tanya Francisco, our new Program Assistant for the department. Tanya brings 15+ years of program management and support ranging from hospital to research to tech settings, and her expertise has made a very smooth transition into supporting our faculty and student-driven events, trips, and internship contracts.
Lastly, I want to thank each student, alum, and family member who wrote to WWU’s administration last Spring when they heard they cut our full-time HHD Lab Tech position (i.e., our cadaver tech) due to the budget woes. Your swift call to action to mobilize your voices and let the President’s office know that their cut jeopardized the entire WWU cadaver program caused HUGE waves. Instead of indefinitely trying to run the cadaver program with a part-time position, I am happy to report that we have been given the funding this year to rehire a full-time Lab Tech once again. The cadaver program is safe and thriving because of all of you. The faculty and staff in our department are touched and deeply grateful for everyone’s support in our efforts to reinstate this position.
As always, please keep in touch by stopping by, sending email updates, and sharing your stories. Please continue reading by clicking on each of our program sections and if you feel inspired, we thank you in advance for any funding support you make to either our HHD department as a whole or to our individual programs: Kinesiology and Physical Education, Public Health, and Recreation Management and Leadership.
Linda Keeler
Professor, Sport and Exercise Psychology
Chair, Department of Health and Human Development
Co-Director, Center for Performance Excellence
