UW-Platteville strength instructor lives stewardship of place motto by training senior citizens

Humans are meant to move. We're dealing with sedentarism and diseases of excess. We can combat that with motion, and we have an express responsibility to the community to help them partake in things that can help them.

- UW-Platteville Health and Human Performance lecturer Davoncie Granderson

For 77-year-old Joyce Eveland, gloomy fall days have been tough since her husband died two years ago. 

But thanks to a partnership between a UW-Platteville strength instructor and a local Platteville gym, those days are a little brighter for the retired teacher. She's spent much of the past year slinging weights and bashing punching bags as part of UW-Platteville Health and Human Performance lecturer Davoncie Granderson's Fountain of Youth fitness class along with a dozen or so of her fellow senior citizens at Impact Fitness in Platteville.

"It just makes me feel good physically and mentally," Eveland said. "I feel better after I do it."

Granderson's class is another example of a College of Liberal Arts and Education instructor living the school's "stewardship of place" mantra. The college adopted the motto four years ago as part of a new emphasis on collaborating with community members to solve the tri-state region's critical problems as well as protect the area's physical, cultural and ...