From a basketball player running a mentorship program and successful catering business to a researcher investigating the effects of exercise and nutrition on women’s metabolism, meet some of the students in KPE’s class of 2021.
Hassan Adenola, Tiffany Tiu, David Sewell, Stephanie Estafanos and Joseph Gurgis graduated from KPE's undergraduate and graduate programs on June 23. We share their stories below.
When Hassan Adenola moved with his family from Nigeria to Canada at age 10, everything was different - the people, the climate, the language. But, he discovered a love of basketball in middle school and by high school, he made the decision that this was something he was going to pursue seriously.
In addition to making him a good basketball player, the daily drills served to instill time management skills in a young Adenola, which served him well when he went on to university. He chose to go into kinesiology after ripping his pattelar tendon in grade 11. The injury kept him away from the game he loves, but also got him thinking.
“I’m always curious, so when this happened, I wanted to know why? What’s going on with my body? Why does my leg look like a raw chicken after surgery? How will my body recover?” he says.
After two years of studying kinesiology at York University, Adenola transferred to the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at U of T and joined the Varsity Blues men’s basketball team. He played one season before another injury forced him to retire, but he wasn’t done with basketball. Armed with a glowing reference from Blues Head Coach John Campbell, Adenola was hired by The York School to coach grade four and five basketball.
“I love working with kids,” he says. “I could be dead tired, but being around them gives me a boost of energy.”
A few summers ago, Adenola started a mentorship program called GAINS, short for Great Achievements Involve a Number of Sacrifices. The program is for youth aged 14 to 18 and offers workshops on a range of subjects, from writing resumes and cooking to relationships and financial literacy.
His friends from KPE, Jasleen K. Panesar and Hemraj Gosai, and his girlfriend Ayana Buchanan, a kinesiology student from York, are helping him run the program, which had to move online this year due to the pandemic.
“When you’re a young black person, you don’t always have the keys that others have to succeed in society,” says Adenola. “I was privileged to meet people in my life who helped me open some of those doors. I cherish my mentors and I want to be one for these youth, by sharing some of the lessons I learned at university and in life.”
He says the best thing university taught him is to never give up.
“U of T challenges you,” he says. “Embrace the challenge. Find people who can help you and if you have to take a step back to focus on your mental health, do it, but don’t give up because when you get over that hump, it’s such an amazing, satisfying feeling.”
Adenola knows a thing or two about satisfying people through cooking, another passion project passed on to him by his mom, who could do much with few ingredients to feed him and his five brothers.
He worked as a sous chef for six years at a golf club before starting his own catering business called Chef Hassan TV. The business really took off during the pandemic as people grew tired of their own cooking and started missing eating outside.
With exams over and a bachelor of kinesiology diploma to his name, he plans to push the gas pedal on his business now. But on June 23, he suspended all his activities for a short while to Zoom into KPE’s online graduation reception and savour the moment of seeing his name among the class of 2021 graduates.
"It's a great feeling," he says.
Tiffany Tiu grew up in Hong Kong and came to Canada just a week before the start of the popular outdoor project course, a novel and somewhat challenging experience due to an initial language barrier.
“I was not used to speaking English all the time nor was I able to fully understand what my peers were saying,” says Tiu. “However, I enjoyed learning about kayaking, canoeing, portaging and lighting camp fires.”
Tiu was drawn to kinesiology thanks to her interest in sport, physical activity and the human body.
“Kinesiology was a great program for me to look at different facets of human movement: from anatomy to biomechanics, from fitness to sports, and from physiology to sociology,” she says.
She was also driven to it by her interest in physiotherapy, something she often required while pursuing different sports in her youth.
“As a sports lover, I did not live my athletic career injury-free,” says Tiu. “However, growing up in a low-income, single-parent family, I did not have the ability to afford physiotherapies.
"I relied on researching my injuries on Google and using cost-free ways of helping myself. These experiences planted a seed in my heart to one day offer free physiotherapy services to those who can’t afford them.”
Tiu was thrilled to receive a prestigious scholarship allowing her to study abroad at U of T at no cost. She chose to go into kinesiology as a pathway to her dream. Once in the program, she says she fell in love with biomechanics.
“I have taken all the biomechanics courses I could find,” she says. “I am fascinated when I study how musculoskeletal anatomy, physics and physiology come together to help us understand how we move, how we should train, how we are injured and how we rehabilitate.
“I would like to give a shout out to Assistant Professor Tyson Beach who taught me biomechanics with such passion and supervised my first research project. I also feel fortunate to have benefitted from Assistant Professor Timothy Burkhart’s supervision of my final research project.”
Apart from her academic experience, Tiu is also grateful for her experiences in student leadership and governance.
“My terms in the KPE Undergrad Association, U of T Students’ Union and the Council of Athletics and Recreation have given me numerous opportunities to participate in campus work, student advocacy and conversations to improve student life,” she says. “I am so grateful that these opportunities exist as they have become vital contributors to my personal growth and valuable ways to give back to my community.”
David Sewell graduated with an undergrad in Physical & Health Education from York University in 1995 and got his first "break" working for a rehabilitation clinic specializing in aqua/pool therapy. His experience as a successful varsity swimmer and an NCCP certified swimming coach helped recommend him for the job.
In 2000 he opened his own kinesiology consulting company. When kinesiology became a regulated health profession in 2013, Sewell took the next step and opened his own clinic called Leslieville Kinesiology.
“I was always interested in completing a master’s degree, but the right opportunity never arose until I became aware of KPE’s Master of Professional Kinesiology program. I enrolled and absolutely loved it," he says.
“As a clinician, I have always focused on the person in front of me. My experience in the MPK program has helped me to think bigger and realize that as a kinesiologist, I can make an impact not just on an individual, but on the population.”
Noting that Canadians have become more sedentary over the past 25 years while diseases directly linked to sedentary behaviour such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity have steadily increased, Sewell says it’s clear more needs to be done to convince the general public about the importance of physical activity.
“The MPK program taught me how to look at physical activity through a sociocultural context to help make it both relevant and accessible to everyone,” he says. “It also changed how I see myself - no longer as an expert in human movement who prescribes exercise routines, but as a health care practitioner whose role is to drive change to empower Canadians to improve their health through culturally relevant and meaningful physical activity.”
In addition to attending nearly double the Interprofessional Education (IPE) courses required as part of the MPK program, Sewell volunteered with the IPE steering committee to help design some of the content. Encouraged by Associate Professor Daniel Santa Mina, he stayed on in this role after graduation “in order to help contribute to the recognition of the role kinesiologists can play on healthcare teams.”
Sewell is also grateful for the leadership of Assistant Professor David Frost, director of the MPK program, and Assistant Professor Tyson Beach, who both inspired him to act as a leader within his cohort and leverage his experience to help his classmates through the challenge of remote clinical placements.
In fact, he’s decided to go a step further and will be offering his clinic as a placement for future MPK students looking to gain clinical experience.
“It’s my way of giving back to the program that’s given me so much” says Sewell, who is the first student in the history of the MPK program to be awarded the U of T Student Leadership Award.
MSc graduate Stephanie Estafanos went into kinesiology at the University of Toronto with the intention of applying to medical school afterwards. In her fourth year, she took an elective course on nutrition aids in sport and exercise.
Designed by Associate Professor Daniel Moore, the course was taught by Moore’s post-doctoral student at the time, Jenna Gillen. Shortly after, Gillen was hired as an assistant professor by the Faculty and Estafanos jumped at the opportunity to be her first graduate student.
She worked with Gillen on exploring the potential of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) to improve markers of metabolic health such as blood sugar control.
“The efficacy of HIIT is well-characterized in males, but it’s less understood if females achieve the same metabolic health benefits,” she says. “My thesis explored whether post-exercise carbohydrate restriction can enhance the health benefits of HIIT in females.”
Data collection for Estafanos’ research study was cut short due to COVID-19 restrictions on human research, and as a result the sample size for her study was smaller than planned. Nonetheless, preliminary results of her research showed that there was an improvement in blood sugar control the day after exercise when carbohydrates were restricted following exercise, which suggests that it is possible for a single session of HIIT to improve metabolic health in females, but it may ultimately depend on nutrition after exercise.
“Much of the classic exercise physiology/metabolism research has focused on men, leaving a large gap in our understanding of the impact of exercise and nutrition interventions on metabolic outcomes in women,” says Estafanos. “Our research attempts to bridge this gap by conducting exercise and nutrition studies in women across the lifespan."
This research, according to Estafanos, will help optimize exercise and nutrition guidelines for women and provide evidence-based information on practical and effective strategies to prevent metabolic disease in this population.
Estafanos is keen to acknowledge Gillen “for being an exceptional mentor” and providing her with support, encouragement and opportunities to excel as a researcher.
“She has helped me grow in more ways than one, both as a researcher and person, and I am truly lucky to have her as my role model,” says Estafanos, who will be continuing her studies at KPE with Gillen as a PhD student of kinesiology.
Her message to the class of 2021: “Always work hard, enjoy the journey and trust that as long as you have passion and excitement in what you do, one day you will be exactly where you need to be.”
Joseph Gurgis started conducting research at KPE as an undergraduate student. Upon completing his undergraduate degree, he pursued his master’s degree in the Faculty, and eventually his PhD.
“I had a passion for sport and coaching my whole life and once I stopped playing varsity baseball, I remained involved in sport through research,” he says.
Gurgis’ PhD thesis explored sport stakeholders’ ideas and experiences of safe sport and their recommendations for advancing it. Working under the supervision of Professor Gretchen Kerr, Gurgis’ expanded on these ideas to suggest the concept of safe sport should acknowledge and prioritize the integration of human rights in sport.
“I had very poor experiences as a varsity athlete, which I never questioned until I started working with Professor Kerr,” says Gurgis. “She opened my eyes to a whole new body of research related to athlete welfare, athlete protection and positive coaching, which transformed my perspectives on the overall sport experience.”
With the rise in media coverage of athlete abuse and emerging evidence showing the prevalence of maltreatment in sport, Gurgis is keen to “stimulate a paradigm shift” in sport.
“The culture of sport must shift from one that normalizes maltreatment towards one that recognizes its harmful effects,” he says.
Looking back on his experience at KPE, Gurgis says it has granted him several opportunities to travel the world, especially as a graduate student.
“My first plane ride ever was actually three weeks into my master’s degree. I went to Las Vegas for a conference and learned a valuable lesson in work-life balance,” he says. “Since then, I’ve travelled to Japan, Norway and all over the US and Canada.”
Giving a special shout out to all current and past members of the KPE Safe Sport Lab, Gurgis says working on a PhD in the middle of a global pandemic was a bit of an adjustment, but it had its upside.
“I prefer writing in the library or in a coffee shop; being in a new setting often energizes me,” he says. “The pandemic forced me to adjust my expectations and work approach, and did provide me with the time to write the final chapters of my thesis.”
Having spent eleven years in KPE, Gurgis has many lessons to share. He singles out staying curious.
“In a dynamic area such as kinesiology, where our understanding of health, sport and the body are continuously challenged and negotiated, it’s critical for us to continuously ask “why?” he says.
Up next, Gurgis will be completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cape Breton University (CBU), where he will be exploring the sport experiences of Mi’kmaq First Nation coaches, while lecturing in their Department of Experiential Studies in Community and Sport.