Kathryn Duff
“…I can think of a hundred things that have to do with students – individual moments with students that were fun and profound…we’ve learned as much from students as they’ve learned from us.””
kathryn duff
Supportive Faculty Culture
Kathryn came to the College in 1993. In the beginning, she worked as a contract instructor for both Douglas College and the University of the Fraser Valley (then University College of the Fraser Valley). She eventually became a full-time SPSC faculty member at Douglas College.
During her time as a contract instructor, Kathryn worked with the field hockey national team. Recalling the divided time between teaching and coaching, Kathryn remembers how faculty members would fill in for one another if they had to temporarily leave to dedicate time to coaching teams:
“…[T]hat was the kind of culture we had…people just covered for each other, because sport and travel…was part of our industry.”
“So, those are important things – faculty culture. I…spent a lot of time on the selection committee for hiring. That, to me, was really important because it set the culture of our faculty and how we wanted to grow the program.”
kathryn, on the importance of rapport within the faculty
Teaching Sport Injury
In the SPSC department, Kathryn’s area of instruction focuses on content involving sport injury.
This focus area, in fact, was how Kathryn first came to the College. At the time, the SPSC faculty was looking for someone to teach sport injury courses as part of its curriculum; Kathryn, who then worked at the Sport Medicine Council, was scouted because of her experience with the topic. From then to now, Kathryn has consistently taught and developed sport injury-related curriculum; these courses remain one of her biggest contributions to the SPSC program.*
*Some courses, in earlier days, included Introduction to Sports Injuries (PHED 180) – now revised as Introduction to Sport Safety (SPSC 1180) – and The Care and Prevention of Sports Injuries (PHED 480); others, like Athletic Injury Assessment and Management (SPSC 3276), was created during the development of the BPEC degree, and continues to exist as part of the curriculum today.
Research Work
Apart from creating and teaching sport injury-related content, Kathryn is also keenly interested in research. To focus on this latter enterprise, she has taken research and education leaves from the College, where she would temporarily leave her full-time teaching position to pursue her research topics.
Kathryn’s interest initially lay in orthopedics (which aligned nicely with her sport injury content), and later, cardiology – both areas whose research work Kathryn carried out at the BC Children’s Hospital. As a reflection of her involvement in research, Kathryn has also developed the course SPSC 3256: Research Methods in Sport Science, Physical Education and Recreation. Her research periods also created learning opportunities for students, where they could come in and assist her in the research work.
“It was neat to teach and [also] to do research…because I had students that could come for that journey with me.”
kathryn, on the opportunities her research created for the students
BPEC Curricular Mapping
During the development of the BPEC program, Kathryn constructed the curriculum for Fieldwork along with Tim and Brian.
Together, they mapped out Fieldwork’s stages of progression throughout the four-year duration, its curricular goals and expectations, and the ways it would be accomplished. All having had training in emotional intelligence, the team sought to especially incorporate this concept into Fieldwork in hopes of encouraging social, emotional, and practical competence in students.
Read more about EI and Fieldwork here and here, respectively.
Kathryn continues to work as part of the SPSC faculty at Douglas College today.
“Those guys [Gert, Robin, Tim, Alan, Chris] were…always student centered, and always just really loved what they were doing – and they instilled that in everybody moving forward.”
– Kathryn, on the values of the SPSC department
Sport Science: A Trek Through Time 