Joy Bauer

I’m a 1st year PhD student in PCS. I was born in Sayre, PA and moved to Bethlehem, PA before middle school. I was an active and somewhat stubborn/willful child. I started in ballet and “acrobatics”(tumbling on a wooden floor…very smart) when I was in kindergarten, and soon added gymnastics. While my decision to focus on gymnastics was at least partially due to my lifelong hatred of stockings/tights, the sport was fun. After some years, my body did not love gymnastics as much as my heart did (Lifetime Movie forthcoming), so I turned to studying and coaching the sport.I earned my BS in Kinesiology from Penn State University in 1999 and my M.Ed in Sport and Recreation Administration from Temple University in 2002.

I worked in college athletics for 8 years before returning to a doctorate. I served as an assistant women’s gymnastics coach at Temple, a conference assistant for the Middle Atlantic Corporation, as an Academic Advisor for student-athletes at George Washington University, and as an Athletic Academic Advisor and Assistant Director of Academic Services at Central Michigan University. I have very strong opinions on the current state of college athletics, particularly on college football, as a result of my work experience.

I’m interested in so many areas of PCS that it scares me. Obviously, gymnastics is one major area of intrigue, along with training practices in Communist nations, the role of the leotard in expressing national/party pride, all the sundry body issues in women’s athletics, the role of athletics in performing gender, the cultural perception and reaction to the onset of puberty in elite female athletes, the culture of amateur wrestling, the role of government in centralized training centers for Olympic Sports and the effects of de-centralization due to political revolution.

In a nutshell, I love being outside, dogs (I have 2), my niece, and photography.