Recognizing alumni who stand for justice and equality
The David L. Gallahue Champion Alumni Award recognizes contributions of alumni who advance the cause of justice and equality. Established in 2016, it is named after Dr. David Gallahue who served on the faculty of the school from 1970 to 2007 and as Dean from 2002 to 2007, and was a champion for diversity and inclusion. Recipients are School of Public Health-Bloomington and its prior incarnation as Health, Physical Education, and Recreation alumni who have made significant and sustained contributions in the advancement of health equities.
2023 recipients
Dr. Kenneth Mosely is a retired professor of kinesiology at South Carolina University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He was the first African American person to earn a doctorate in physical education (P.E.D.) from Indiana University. Upon graduating from IU, Mosely worked at South Carolina State University until he retired as a full professor and chair of the Department of Health and Physical Education in 2005.
During his tenure at SCSU, Dr. Mosely served for 17 years as Project Director of the National Youth Sports Program (NYSP) and the USDA Summer Feeding Program. He also volunteered as a Red Cross swimming instructor, served on the South Carolina Governor’s Council for Physical Fitness, and was a charter board member of the YMCA in Orangeburg, S.C. He developed a highly successful math and science project, which served as a national model for NYSP from 1993–2000. Funding for this specific grant, at the national level, exceeded $9 million for 14 different universities.
Dr. Mosely also worked with IU to develop a highly successful graduate-level initiative—the I-95 HBCU Recruitment Program—which enabled more than 60 students from several different HBCUs to earn academic scholarships for IU graduate degrees over a ten-year period.
He received the John R. Endwright Alumni Service Award from SPH-B in 2002.
Kenneth Mosely
Dr. Jackson Wilson is professor and chair of the Department of Recreation, Parks & Tourism at San Francisco State University. His research has included a focus on the marginalization of people perceived as experiencing homelessness and nonhuman wild animals in urban park spaces. He studied the health impacts of soundscape, solar exposure, and stress in outdoor environments and has secured more than $1.8 million in research funding as a PI or co-PI.
He is chair of the SFSU College of Health and Social Sciences Online Education Committee and is a faculty fellow with the SFSU Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
Dr. Wilson serves as one of the three senators from San Francisco State University in the 23-campus Academic Senate of the California State University. For 10 years, he was coordinator of a northern California multi-campus hybrid graduate program in recreation, parks, & tourism.
He received his Ph.D. in leisure behavior from SPH-B in 2010.
Jackson Wilson
Past recipients
Dr. Sara Oswalt is chair of the Department of Public Health at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). She earned her M.P.H. from SPH-B and her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Her research interests include college health (especially sexual and reproductive health) and LGBTQ+ issues as they relate to mental health. A prolific speaker and respected author on a wide range of public health topics, she has also secured significant grant funding for studies on women’s physical and mental health, including “Where Two Roads Meet: Lived Experiences of Mother-Students Balancing Home and School.”
She is a sought-after expert in mental health disorders among college students, serving as the lead author of a 2020 report that tracked the rates of mental health disorders and the use of mental health services on campuses from 2009–2015. Dr. Oswalt is a certified sexuality educator by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT); co-author of Exploring the Dimensions of Human Sexuality 5th Ed. (2014); and the recipient of several honors including a Faculty of the Year Award from UTSA.
Mrs. Gwendolyn Croom Hamm is a Professor Emerita at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington in the Department of Kinesiology. Professor Hamm has two degrees from SPH-B including a B.S. in Physical Education, and a M.S. in Physical Education majoring in Dance. She was the first African American to attain tenure in the School of Public Health-Bloomington, formerly the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation.
Professor Hamm was a master teacher and academic advisor for dance majors, and for over 200 Sport Communication majors. She was also a student mentor and choreographer. Maintaining a professional presence, Professor Hamm made numerous presentations for regional and national conferences, and organizations, including the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD); the Midwest District AAHPERD; the Indiana AHPERD; the National Dance Education Organization; the American College Dance Festival (Mid-Atlantic Region); and the Bill Evans Summer Institute of Dance.
Professor Hamm was also the Coordinator of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Kinesiology from 1992-2012 and served on numerous departmental and school committees.
Professor Hamm is an active member of Nu Corinthian Church, where she was one of several musicians in the music ministry for over 30 years. She currently volunteers in the NuC Cleaning Ministry and the Mary Ann Craig Scholarship Ministry, which provides scholarships for high school seniors pursuing higher education.
Today Professor Hamm enjoys her weekly Bible Study fellowship, spending quality time with family (Robert, Loren, and Rebekah) and caring for her 3-year old grandson Mason Robert.
Professor Emerita Iris Rosa holds two degrees from the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington including a B.S. in Physical Education and a M.S. in Physical Education majoring in Dance.
Professor Rosa was born in Guayama, Puerto Rico and raised in East Chicago, Indiana. She is a Professor Emerita in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies and the founding and former Director of the African American Dance Company. Her specializations include teaching dance technique, history and choreography from the perspective of the African American and African Diaspora and bridging the contemporary modern dance genre with African diaspora dance forms and styles.
Prof. Rosa has studied, researched, presented, and taught dance in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Havana, Matanzas, Guantanamo, and Santiago, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica and Beijing, China. Her choreographic themes explore immigration, emigration and lived experiences of people in the African diaspora.
Prof. Rosa has worked as a choreographer, dancer and actor on many community projects in Indianapolis at the Phoenix Theatre, Civic Theatre, Madame Walker Theatre Center and the Jazz Kitchen.
Professor Rosa is the artistic director of Sancocho: Music and Dance Collage and Seda Negra/Black Silk, ensembles dedicated to researching and performing African influenced dance and music from the Caribbean and Latin America.
Professor Rosa’s future plans include opening a school with her family dedicated to the research of dance and music forms to expose students to the rich diversity of dance from the African diaspora.
Founding Dean of the School of Health and Human Sciences at IUPUI, Dr. Bahamonde received his Ph.D. in Human Performance with a sports biomechanics major and a minor in human anatomy from Indiana University, Bloomington. His research interests are in sport and clinical biomechanics which include gait analysis, injury prevention, and sports equipment testing. He served as chair of the Department of Kinesiology, associate dean, and interim dean of the School of Physical Education and Tourism Management. He is currently the founding dean of the IUPUI School of Health & Human Sciences.
Dr. Bahamonde is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at IUPUI, a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the International Society for Biomechanics in Sports (ISBS), and a member of IU Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching (FACET) and IUPUI Translational Scholar Program. He received the IUPUI Center for Research and Learning Director’s Mentoring Award for Outstanding Leadership and Mentoring of Undergraduate Research and the Joseph Taylor Award for Excellence in Diversity. He served for 10 years as the sport biomechanist for the United States Tennis Association Sport Science Committee.
Dr. Bahamonde has been involved in the promotion of undergraduate research and the advancement of underrepresented minorities in higher education. He was the director of the Diversity Scholars Research Program at IUPUI (DSRP) and has been involved as a mentor in federal and university programs such as LSAMP, McNairs, UROP, SROP, and HBCU. He is currently a member of the leadership team and co-investigator of Louis Stokes Midwest Regional Center for Excellence, an NSF-funded program for the development of a national hub of information for scholars to access data, models, and funding opportunities in broadening participation of underrepresented minority (URM) students in STEM. He is also the co-PI and director of the NIH-funded IUPUI Graduate Preparation for the Biomedical and Behavioral Sciences.
Omar Martinez is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Temple University. He completed his master's degree in public health, juris doctorate at Indiana UniversityBloomington, as well as a master's degree in biostatistics with a focus on clinical research methods at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Mr. Martinez completed an NIH T32 postdoctoral research fellowship in behavioral science research in HIV prevention at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He has research expertise in the correlates, prevalence, and prevention of substance use/disorders, mental illness, and HIV risk behaviors among underserved and vulnerable populations, including Latino men who have sex with men.
He has developed and implemented programs and interventions to address the health disparities affecting Latinos and underserved populations, including HoMBReS, a best-evidence communitylevel intervention HIV prevention for self-identified heterosexual Latinos that is funded through the NIH.
Dr. Phillip Schnarrs is an Associate Professor at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas Austin. He holds joint appointments in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at UT Austin, and with the Center for Research to Advance Community Health at UT Health—San Antonio. Dr. Schnarrs is an Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and has long been a queer activist.
Dr. Schnarrs' work builds upon the training that he received in community-based participatory research while working as a project coordinator at the Center for Sexual Health Promotion during his time at Indiana University. He has built partnerships throughout Central Texas with local LGBTQ+ community-based organizations and envisions bridging his queer health projects in San Antonio and Austin to promote engagement between the two communities.
As a founding member of the Austin PrEP Access Project and the South Texas Consortium for Sexual Health Research, Dr. Schnarrs has been able to create community, academic, and industry partnerships that promote equity in the access and uptake of PrEP among those who need it most. He also works extensively with the Latinx populations and as a result, was afforded the opportunity to speak at Gilead's Latinx/Hispanic PrEP Advisory Committee. Dr. Schnarrs is also currently a finalist for a fellowship in youth HIV prevention with Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions.
Dr. Schnarrs is passionate about putting the needs of the community first, inequality and social justice. He strives to find solutions to ensure equal access to preventative health care by providing empirical data along with the promotion of community engagement and activism.
Dr. Lisako Jones McKyer is an Associate Professor in the Division of Health Education at Texas A&M University and Associate Dean for Climate and Diversity. She is also the founder and director of the Child and Adolescent Health Research Lab (CAHRL) at Texas A&M, and the Director of the Transdisciplinary Center for Health Equity Research (TCHER).
She earned her B.A. in Psychology at California State University, Northridge. While there, she also earned numerous awards for her academics and service activity, including the Richard Coleman Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement and Departmental Service. From there she spent many years at Indiana University Bloomington, where she completed Doctoral Studies in Clinical Science in regards to Child/Pediatric Clinical Psychology, her M.P.H. in Community Health, and her Ph.D. in Health Behavior.
While at Indiana University, she received the Ruth Engs Graduate Research award, an award given out annually to a female doctoral student conducting research in health history or addictive behaviors. She also earned the Indiana University Commission on Multicultural Understanding Award for her contributions to creating a climate on the Bloomington campus that welcomes and celebrates differences.
She has taught numerous graduate and undergraduate courses at both Indiana University and Texas A&M University, has been invited to give presentations all over the country, and has also refereed journal publications and published abstracts.
