The new president of the Northern District of the Illinois Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance is more than the typical working woman.

Connie Fox, assistant professor of physical education at NIU, became president-elect of the association in November 1992. This year, Fox serves as president of the Northern District, which covers the western suburbs to the Mississippi River.

Fox said the organization is a professional association of over 3,000 physical education, health education, dance education and recreation teachers.

“Our main purpose is to work with people. We hold the annual convention every November, workshops around the state every spring and in-services for teachers.”

As president, Fox serves as a liaison between the association and teachers and as an active member on the executive board. She organized and hosted the spring workshop last year and will secure candidates to run for all the positions available in the association next year.

The association provides a spring workshop every year for its members, many of which are NIU students.

The workshop will include sessions dealing with how to teach country-western line dancing, which is important for dance majors, Fox said. Another session will be devoted to how games can be adapted for physically disabled children so their handicap is not a limiting factor in gym class.

NIU students often present the sessions. “Our students at Northern are the only ones in the state that have presented at the programs and workshops; usually it’s professionals. These students are a pretty impressive group,” Fox said.

Fox also devotes her time to chairing the Youth Fitness Program, which aims at finding out how fit Illinois kids are.

Fitness testing programs were conducted at 30 schools across the state and the data was compiled for each age and sex.

“Overall, Illinois children are more fit than the national average,” Fox said. “This can be attributed to the fact that Illinois is the only state that has mandatory physical education every day, (grades) K through 12.”