The status of physical education programs at selected historically black private colleges and universities in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Abstract

This study investigated the general education requirements for physical education programs in thirteen selected historically black private colleges and universities in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. The areas studied demographic characteristics of institutions, personnel, professional development of faculty, course requirements, credits, course offerings, evaluation, and recent program developments.

Chief academic officers at each institution were contacted by letter and asked to participate in the study. Chairpersons of physical education departments at their respective institutions were subsequently asked to complete a questionnaire encompassing the eight areas under investigation. Tables were developed from data to depict major findings, which included the following: (1) demographic characteristics--institutions varied widely in size but were generally characterized by substantially higher female enrollment; (2) personnel--faculty was male dominated; highest earned degree was primarily the master's; and most faculty had varsity coaching responsibilities; (3) professional development--approximately one-third of faculty were engaged in professional development activities; (4) course requirements--institutions were similar with regard to offering physical education courses for the general student and requiring it for all students; there were wide variations in excuse policies and their application, number of years of physical education and kinds of courses required for graduation, use of proficiency or competency tests in lieu of required physical education courses, and amount of time spent in class per week; (5) credits--there was little uniformity among institutions in the amount of class time required to generate credit hours; (6) course offerings--practices for categorizing courses differed, coeducational courses were generally available, students selected a vast array of most popular activities, independent study options were generally unavailable, most schools had intramural programs which were also coeducational; (7) evaluation--schools were uniform in using letter grades in computing physical education grades in cumulative grade point average for all students, including honor students, and most used written final examinations and skill and performance tests; (8) recent developments--there were fluctuations in the availability of coeducational offerings