The Tucker Center's Borghild-Strand Distinguished Lecture Series exemplifies our commitment to community outreach and public scholarship. This annual event provides a venue for the most influential individuals in women’s sports to share their knowledge and expertise.
2024 Distinguished Lecture Series
The Physical Activity of East African Girls & Women: The Ripple Effect of Community-Based Research
Diverse populations of girls are the least active of all youth, and little is known about the physical activity behaviors of racial-ethnic sub-populations of girls. In our 2007 Developing Physically Active Girls Research Report, we called for more research to reverse the trend of physical inactivity disparity. The Twin Cities Metro Area in Minnesota is home to the largest diaspora of East Africans in the United States—and little information was available regarding East African adolescent girls' experiences of physical activity.
Using a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach, Tucker Center Affiliated Scholar Chelsey Thul, PhD, worked alongside girls, community members, and interdisciplinary scholars to evaluate their needs and to create strategies for increasing physical activity participation. Muna Mohamed, Jennifer Weber, and Chelsey will share insights from their collaborative, groundbreaking research and the numerous ways it has made community and industry impact. This lecture and body of work is an exemplar of how innovative research can create limitless rippling impact.
Event details
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
6:30-8 p.m.
Cowles Auditorium
Closest available parking is in the 19th Avenue Ramp
Free and open to the public
Panelists
Muna Mohamed, MS, is a visionary entrepreneur and former semi-professional basketball player who founded Kalsoni to address the lack of modest activewear for Muslim women. Frustrated by her own struggles in finding culturally appropriate sportswear, Muna transformed that challenge into an opportunity to create inclusive, high-performance activewear that empowers Muslim women and girls to pursue their passions without compromising their values. With a background in kinesiology and experience as a youth coach, Muna understood the barriers that kept women like her from staying active. Kalsoni's foundation was sparked by a pivotal moment—a community-driven research project titled "Impact of Culturally Sensitive Apparel Co-Design on the Physical Activity of East African Adolescent Girls." Inspired by this project, Muna developed the first culturally sensitive sports uniform for Muslim girls, igniting her passion for inclusive activewear that enables women to pursue their athletic goals while honoring their beliefs.
Kalsoni, meaning confidence in Somali, is a purpose-driven lifestyle brand by women, for women, committed to promoting the health and well-being of Muslim women and girls. Muna offers a range of activewear that prioritizes comfort, functionality, and style while reflecting modest values, instilling confidence in women and girls. Her entrepreneurial journey has been marked by resilience and local, national, and international recognition. She was a finalist in the MN Cup competition, a recipient of the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota Innovator grant, one of 8 companies nationally selected for the Target Incubator program, and one of fifty globally selected to participate in the Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators–a McKnight Foundation program designed to empower rising global young changemakers in the creative sector to drive social, economic, and urban change. She was also named an Entreprenista100, a Tory Burch Fellow, and featured in the Sunday paper of StarTribune.
Kalsoni became the first modest activewear brand to partner with a major retailer, REI, and is now sold in stores across Minnesota. This groundbreaking achievement not only expanded Kalsoni’s reach but also cemented Muna’s vision of making inclusive activewear accessible on a larger scale. In addition to her business, Muna holds degrees in Exercise Science and Kinesiology. She co-founded Cedar Riverside Athletics & Enrichment and worked with Girls on the Run Minnesota and the Minnesota Timberwolves & Lynx, empowering women and girls long before Kalsoni began.
Jennifer Weber (Coach Weber), BA, began her career as a special education early childhood care provider 30 years ago. For nearly half of her career, she worked in her Native American community as an educational advocate. The other half has been as a highly respected teacher, mentor and coach in the Cedar Riverside Neighborhood. Her coaching career has gone hand in hand with her teaching career starting in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis as a recreation and club coach for basketball, volleyball, softball, and track. She quickly moved into coaching at the high school level and built a successful program at PACT in Anoka. Then, she returned to college at Augsburg University where she was assigned service learning for her course work and decided to stay close to campus at Cedar Riverside Community School.
Coach Weber quickly realized that the community lacked quality sports and experiential opportunities, so she became involved with girls and women-only sports programming. Through the connections she built she became a pivotal leader with the University of Minnesota Co-Design project. She brought on 24 adolescent girls to participate. The work with the girls led to a deeper connection with the families and from that the follow-up research for the Mother/Daughter Co-Design project was born, and the co-founding of Cedar Riverside Athletics & Enrichment–where she is currently the director.
Her outstanding contributions to community building and sport have been recognized through numerous awards, including the Minnesota Vikings 100 Women of Distinction Award, U of M Tucker Center Youth Coach of the Year, Spirit of Augsburg Award, AdVenture Capital National Social Entrepreneurship Award, and the City of Minneapolis Public Health Hero award. Most consider her “Coach Weber” because of her many hours in the gym coaching basketball from the little dribblers to the adults, but in her heart and mind she is an educator, connector, and a fierce advocate for opportunities.
Chelsey Thul, PhD, is an award-winning scholar on the topics of social justice and health equity, youth empowerment, and physical activity. She is a senior lecturer in the School of Kinesiology and an affiliated scholar of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. Thul received her PhD in kinesiology from the University of Minnesota with an emphasis in sport & exercise psychology and a minor in prevention science. She completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in Interdisciplinary Research in Child and Adolescent Health in the Department of Pediatrics, as well as completed the Health Equity Leadership and Mentoring Program in the Program in Health Disparities Research –both in the University of Minnesota’s Medical School, before coming back to the School of Kinesiology as Teaching Faculty in 2015.
Thul has served on the Girls on the Run Minnesota Board of Directors as the Chair of the Equity/Access/Inclusion Committee, the Girls Initiative in Recreation and Leisurely Sports (GIRLS) Program Leadership Team, and the Cedar-Riverside Women’s Only Physical Activity Leadership Advocacy Team. Thul currently serves as a member of the Cedar Riverside Athletics & Enrichment Leadership Team and is on the Board of Directors for Coon Rapids/Andover American Little League Baseball. Thul received the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development’s Women’s Philanthropic Leadership Circle Award and Community Outreach and Engagement Staff Award, and a Girls in Sport Hero Award from the Cedar-Riverside Athletic Association for her commitment to inclusion and empowerment leading to success for all girls and women. Thul is also a proud mom and youth baseball coach.