Picture fourth-grader Mary Jo Weaver climbing her favorite trees, playing baseball with friends and riding her pony, and it should surprise no one that this youngster who loved sports and outdoor activities would grow up to have a teaching career devoted to physical activity and movement.
Fast-forward to today and it is now Dr. Mary Jo MacCracken who reflects back on her certainty, even at that young age, about what she would one day do.
Dr. Mary Jo MacCracken
“What do you want to be,” my mother had asked. “I loved analyzing motor skills,” says MacCracken, a professor in the School of Sport Science and Wellness Education. “I was interested in cheerleading — I could tell what caused a person to move with more agility and flexibility. My heart is in movement, and the research and the analysis of movement, rather than teaching tennis, or golf, or hockey,” she adds with one of the warm laughs that so often punctuates her conversation.
But she’s done it all during her decades at UA.
And on April 25, MacCracken will lead the list of honorees being recognized at our annual Employee Service Awards Program. It is scheduled from 3 to 5 p.m. at InfoCision Stadium, fifth floor north. Among the 555 employees celebrating milestone anniversaries, MacCracken alone has 50 years of service. (Event details and the full list of honorees is online.)
Longtime community service honored
The service milestone is just one cause for celebration. MacCracken is one of 12 employees whose “extraordinary contributions” are being recognized at the event with a University of Akron Achievement Award. She is the 2017-18 Community Engagement Award winner.
From her earliest days here, MacCracken was a believer in experiential learning.
“Every single class — Games and Rhythms, Movement Education — I took my students out into the schools to actually work with children,” she recalls. “The schoolchildren loved it and the classroom teachers wanted us there. My students got feedback from me and the classroom teachers. It was a win-win situation.”
Dr. Mary Jo MacCracken leads children in free play during one of the regular sessions she and UA students and colleagues hold for the International Community Empowerment Project.
MacCracken had joined the University in 1968, after three years of teaching and coaching in Hudson Public Schools. She was hired as an instructor in the Department of Physical Education, which was part of the College of Education. Her first office — Memorial Hall 161 —overlooked the Akron Fire Station that bordered campus.
Balancing teaching, research and service
“I taught 10 different classes — bowling, gymnastics, you name it, I taught it for the first couple of years,” says MacCracken, who earned a B.A. in Physical Education at The College of Wooster and an M.A. in Physical Education here before earning a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at Kent State in 1980. Her dissertation was in an area of sport psychology.
Soon, MacCracken began advancing in her academic career, and had opportunities to present her sport psychology research at conferences around the world, from Australia, Greece, Morocco and Switzerland to Thailand, Korea and China. Her classroom focus today is on motor development and learning (MDL), and sport psychology.
Seen here at a recent health fair are Dr. Mary Jo MacCracken and Amber Wisniewski, a post-baccalaureate student getting an additional teaching license in physical education.
Memorial Hall and that fire station have come down to make way for other buildings. Today, MacCracken’s office is in InfoCision Stadium and the School of Sport Science and Wellness Education is part of the College of Health Professions.
It’s a fit that mirrors MacCracken’s own continuing interests.
She and colleagues have received more than $1 million in grant funding for projects that benefit the community and support their research. For example, in 2004, they were awarded $400,000 by the Ohio Commission on Minority Health for “Healthy Lifestyles Inside and Out” to promote healthy eating and exercise in at-risk middle school girls.
Service has lasting impact
Other grants, from organizations such as the United States Tennis Association (USTA Serves) have supported P.A.C.E. (Physical Activity/Tennis & Character/Health Education). Through P.A.C.E., MacCracken, colleagues and UA students teach tennis to disadvantaged, special-needs youth in the Akron Public Schools and provide them with equipment that is theirs to keep.
More grants fund physical activity, health education, literacy programs and healthy movement experiences for minority and immigrant children.
Judith Ann Klingler, a senior lecturer in Sport Science and Wellness Education, is one of the colleagues who helps MacCracken maintain the community engagement programs in which UA students take part. She’s also in the widespread network of alumni that stay in touch with their former professor.
Dr. Mary Jo MacCracken and UA students are pictured here at a recent health fair organized by the Ohio Commission on Minority Health and hosted at nearby Buchtel High School. Through a literacy grant written by MacCracken, the UA team also had books to give to youngsters attending the health fair.
“Mary Jo started off as an influence when I was an undergrad here in the late seventies,” says Klingler. “She has become a mentor over the years of working together.
Providing mentorship
“She was brave enough to have us go to a program at Kent State that showed us how to individualize and work with people of all abilities,” Klingler continues. “It was an Adapted Physical Education program with people from the community, ages 3 to 65, coming on campus to work with the college students. It flipped a switch inside of my heart.”
Adapted physical education and MDL is what Klingler now teaches here, after a career of more than 30 years of teaching adapted physical education in the public schools. She attributes her love for it to that long ago field trip that MacCracken made part of her class.
“There is no keeping up with her,” she says of her mentor. “Her energy and spirit seem unlimited. She really loves what she does — helping children and the community in general.”
Former student Ashley M. White says MacCracken is a role model.
“Dr. MacCracken encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone and involve myself in research, grant writing and community service projects,” recalls White, a lecturer in Health and Exercise Studies at North Carolina State University. “The diverse opportunities Dr. MacCracken provided me with at The University of Akron gave me the confidence to tackle any challenges I may face in my current career.”
The professor herself is happily celebrating her latest service milestone, but she has no intention of slowing down.
“People who ask me about retirement don’t know me very well,” says MacCracken, again with a chuckle. “I know I’m not ready to retire. I love my students; I love my work. I’m interested in giving back. The kids in our programs keep me on my toes. All of it keeps me young.”