Building a fitness model
A conversation with Dr. William G. Squires Jr.

With an extensive background in exercise physiology that includes a stint at NASA and a track record of helping many TLU students advance to medical school and excel in areas of fitness and sports medicine, Dr. Bill Squires has expanded his focus to helping younger children in the Texas public schools. Squires, professor of biology and kinesiology and the Dr. Frederick C. Elliott Chair in Health, Fitness and Nutrition at TLU, earned a B.S. and M. Ed. from Texas State University and a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University and The Baylor College of Medicine. He has worked with the department of cardiology for the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Baylor College of Medicine and the Aerospace Physiology section of Brooks School of Aerospace Medicine. Dr. Squires has been on the TLU faculty since 1980.

How did you first get interested in fitness and obesity issues?
At Baylor we put together a monograph “Exercise and Heart Disease, Theory and Application to Public School Physical Education” that led to an appointment on the Governor’s Commission for Physical Fitness. That led to development of a statewide prevention program and the FYT (Fit Youth Today program). And, of course, the Krost program here at TLU has been advocating fitness, wellness and obesity prevention for over 25 years.

Why did you get involved with the Seguin schools?
The prevalence of pediatric obesity is overwhelming. Three years ago the Texas legislature passed a bill requiring every school district to form a SHAC – School Health Advisory Committee. I was put on the local SHAC along with Pete and Erik Silvus, two of my former students who are working at Seguin ISD’s Saegert Sixth Grade Center. We started working with the district to find instances where we could help each other. Obviously TLU could provide boots on the ground to help this testing project get started. You know it is almost impossible to do all this by yourself when you are just one classroom teacher – three or four high quality kinesiology honors students have been able to provide a lot of help.

What is the concept that you have implemented in the Seguin schools?
Partnership – a partnership between the schools, TLU, businesses, and the community that will improve the fitness of our children – and that will continue for the rest of their lives. We took an unused storage building and got donated equipment to turn it into a wellness center for children. The Saegert principal donated five rowing machines to the initiative. The Guadalupe Regional Wellness Center donated eight treadmills; our TLU fitness center also donated equipment. Our students have just completed giving the statewide mandatory test, testing every Seguin sixth grader for strength and endurance, body composition, aerobic fitness, and flexibility. We’re putting all that information into a database right now to get baseline information. It’s a demonstration project that we are doing to show proof of a concept that we can go into a school and build a wellness center where students are excited about the facilities, rather than just the same old gym.

Has this concept been successful?
We brought in people from the School of Public Health and the Center for Disease Control to look at this concept, since it really hasn’t been done before. Dana Robbins’ honor project is documenting all of the testing and how the concept is working – how all this is going to happen. She’s videotaping it and actually putting together a manual to show how we did this, step by step. The Texas State Deputy Commissioner for Education will be looking at this as a model program.

Tell me about your plans to take this model forward.
Next year on my sabbatical at The University of Texas School of Public Health, I will continue to develop this model and take this concept to try to get legislation passed so that we can move it into many more schools across the state. ♦