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On Friday, October 2, 1998 educators, researchers, hospital workers, health fitness specialists, sports and athletic consultants, directors, editors and reviewers of journals including the JEPonline, students, and others will meet at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, MN. This is the first meeting of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists, as part of the work of the nonprofit organization to professionalize exercise physiology. Sponsored by the Department of Exercise Physiology at St. Scholastica, the faculty seeks to increase interest in the education of exercise physiology students throughout the United States. Part of the meeting is designed to develop and maintain professional dialogue to raise significant issues in the education and hands-on experiences of the undergraduate students of America. Another important part serves as a vehicle for continuing the important work as researchers.

The group will meet, talk, listen, and react to different papers. Participants will consider the concerns and issues faced by recent graduates in the field and the need for communication and networking. Papers will emphasize the importance of professionals working together to develop a more job-specific academic program. Presenters will talk about possibilities in face of the immense if not gigantic challenge before educators revise the exercise science curriculum to exercise physiology.

Several key points are worth mentioning. To begin with, the meeting is the first of its kind in the history of exercise physiology. The presenters are among the first to address the professionalization of exercise physiology. They are prompted by issues that have direct bearing on the stability of the profession. One is the question of certification or licensure (or both), and another is accreditation. Secondly, a parallel theme will be presented by individuals in several different professions who are eager to share their research. Thirdly, emphasis will be placed on the importance of professionals in different fields working together and not as emissaries from greater or lesser careers.

The motive for participation in the meeting will be interesting. Some participants will attend the meeting to present their research. Why not? Their work is important and sharing it with other exercise physiologists is appropriate.A number of the participants will attend because they feel exercise physiologists need licensure. Without it, reimbursement is next to impossible. The issue hits home because payment by insurance companies for services rendered would go a long way towards paying the bills. Other participants (students, in particular) may be looking for possibilities to enhance their careers or to meet other professionals and, perhaps, to get to know what their professors do when they leave campus. Obviously, there are a lot of dimensions to why people attend professional meetings.

Some will attend because they are driven by desires to remediate the public sector and medical society problems of our times, problems which we have experienced, heard about, and no that is inappropriate but too frequently real. If exercise physiology students, who elect to major in the field, are going to prosper in the 21st Century, then it must be at the expense of all exercise physiologists. We are not alone in the quest for professionalization and related issues.

A significant part, but equally allocated, is given to the analysis of the call for a national curriculum as the antidote to general misunderstandings about exercise physiology. No one believes that the public is threaten by graduates of exercise science/physiology programs but, equally clear, is the realization that curriculum changes and consistency across the United States are important to avoiding an academic, if not career oriented, crisis down the road. Some colleges and universities have already updated their programs where by the curriculum for "exercise science" is not the traditional "physical education" major. Unfortunately, it appears that most schools have not assumed the responsibility of upgrading the curriculum.

If our students, however, are going to have meaningful professional mobility, one would assume that the more standardized the exercise physiology curriculum is the more likely all exercise physiologists will share in the economic benefits. Professionalization will lead to an enhance assemblage of knowledge about legitimate reasons for the exercise physiologists' interrelatedness with all health-fitness-rehabilitative care. Ponder the thought! Professional exercise physiologists collaborating among each other in the same typical healthcare workers do today.

Well, as you can see, participants are looking forward to submitting themselves to new ideas. Their attention will be focused on reworking their career options, and challenging the dis-interested in reflecting upon the birth of the professional exercise physiologist. Who knows, you may find a reason to attend the meeting. Yoy may even want away from it interested in strategies to get others to understand the ASEP mission of professionalization. There isn't anything wrong with recruitment, especially when it benefits the majority and has such relevancy for our times. Think about it.

I can only conclude that, like many of my ASEP colleagues, it is time to commit to a better and more secure future for our students. Professional issues must remain as critically important considerations and, in all likelihood, they should be in where our heart is (especially when you recall incidents where exercise physiologists are replaced in the work force with less qualified individuals).

Let us hope that the academic exercise physiologists will hear of the meeting, its history, and the young people who are working to make it right.