There is a new face at the head of the physical education department.

Judith Bischoff has been named the permanent chair of the department after serving as acting chair since September.

Formerly, she was executive secretary of the University Council, NIU’s internal policy-making body. She also has chaired both the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women and the Women’s Advisory Committee.

The department is running smoothly, Bischoff said. “It is doing very well and has a very strong faculty that is well-rounded and involved in a number of scholarly productivities,” she said.

Programmatically Bischoff says the department is working towards a sports management emphasis on the graduate level and a health education major at the undergraduate level. There is currently a health education program but it is contracted program with limited enrollment.

“Right now the sports management program has gone through the department and the college of education,” Bischoff said. “It is going up to the graduate council this fall for approval.”

The department has shown a need for the sports management program and the students have shown that they’re interested in it, Bischoff said.

“Sports management is an up and coming enterprise,” Bischoff said. It prepares people to better deal with the management of sports facilities, she said.

Bischoff is not sure what changes need to be made within the department. “Right now we’re just going to see how things go with all the programming and how the faculty match the programming, and which faculty will be retiring,” she said.

The department currently offers sports and coaching, athletic training, sports medicine, and dance education at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level it offers adapted physical education and exercise physiology.