Thanks to a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education, UW-La Crosse students will get the chance to introduce athletic training in Europe. The training program will also bring students from Spain and Germany to UW-L.
As a junior in UW-La Crosse’s Athletic Training Program, Jenn Werner works with student athletes almost every day throughout the school year.
Werner says, «I’m currently with Women’s Cross County. So a lot of overuse, running issues. Different sports will see different injuries. So we kind of get challenged specifically with what sport we’re working with.”
And in February, Werner and two of her classmates will be faced with another challenge…in Spain.
“As a new start to the program here, they just started an international study abroad exchange, so for the first time students will be coming to our university as well as us three students [Werner, Karrie Nicholson and Christiane Berden] going abroad,» Werner said.
Werner and the students who go overseas through the program will be working towards a new International Sports Medicine Minor.
UW-L Director of Athletic Training Mark Gibson says the students who participate must already have a strong grasp of either Spanish or German before they go.
He says students will learn about the European equivalent of athletic training, which is currently just a North American profession.
«In other countries, it’s done by physicians, physiotherapists and coaches,» Gibson said.
Gibson says students will get clinical experience in hospitals, clinics and physicians offices.
He says this new program has been five-years in the making with Goethe University of Frankfurt in Germany and the University of Granada in Spain. (As well as UW-L’s domestic partner, Chapman University in Orange, California.)
“We’re hoping to introduce the athletic training profession in Europe through academic models,» Gibson said. «So we want a curriculum set up there that will actually teach this course work.”
The program has also brought UW-L’s first German exchange student to the program, Frieder Krause.
“I’m trying to take a lot of pictures, film things that I’m doing here and probably next year I’ll show everything to the students in Frankfurt,» Krause said.
Werner says she’s «very excited and very nervous. It’s been two years in the works and in the talks. Now that every is kinda falling into suit, it’s very exciting.”
And Werner says she can’t wait to come back and tell her classmates all that she’s learned.
Gibson says $180,000 dollars of the grant money will pay for student’s airfare and room and board. He says three students will be able to go abroad each semester.
