Erin Kaye Howie Hickey, an associate professor at the College of Education and Health Professions’ Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation, has been chosen as a 2024-25 Fulbright U.S. Scholar in Australia.
Fulbright fellowships, awarded by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Program, offer chances to teach and perform research overseas, fostering long-term links between people and foreign nations.
During her year in Australia, Howie Hickey will do research at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia, titled “States of Play: The Impact of Recess Policies on Rural Children’s Health and Learning.”
“I’m excited to have this opportunity to follow the College of Education and Health Professions’ previous Fulbright Scholars and to represent the U of A, home of J. William Fulbright,” Hickey said in a statement. “It will be a great opportunity to share and build upon the recess work we’ve been doing in Arkansas, collaborate with world experts in children’s physical activity and play, and share international perspectives with students of all ages.”
Her research project will have three main impacts: providing pilot data for future grant applications to implement recess policies and practices to improve health and learning for all children, collaborating with the world’s first digital child research center, strengthening an international network of school physical activity researchers, and providing meaningful international experiences for Australian and US educational stakeholders.
Howie Hickey will join a long and distinguished list of Fulbright Program graduates, which includes 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and thousands of leaders and world-renowned specialists from academia and beyond. Since its inception in 1946, the program has enrolled over 400,000 students, intellectuals, teachers, artists, and scientists from 155 countries.
She joins William F. McComas, John Pijanowski, Vicki Collet, Michael Daugherty, Barbara Shadden, and G. David Gearhart as College of Education and Health Professions academics who have previously participated in the Fulbright Program.
Hickey’s study at the University of Alberta focuses on children’s physical activity and its impact on educational outcomes. She is the academic adviser for Exercise is Medicine On Campus, a research team and RSO dedicated to promoting physical activity and its health benefits on campus.
She earned a Bachelor of Science in kinesiology from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in exercise science from the University of South Carolina. She is presently a postdoctoral research researcher at Curtin University’s School of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science in Perth.Her ultimate research goal is to encourage healthy physical exercise practices that improve physical and mental health across the lifetime.
