Story #7: Bob Girandola
This week, we sat down with professor Bob Girandola, who has been at USC almost as long as the Joint Educational Project has been around!
Professor Girandola arrived at USC in 1973 (in case you forgot, JEP was founded in 1972!), where he eventually started a two-unit class on nutrition – “Nutrition for Life.” Girandola’s focus is on getting kids moving, which he says nowadays, is more difficult than ever.
“From my standpoint, one of the big issues is obesity, especially childhood obesity, which in this country is [present] in absolutely epidemic proportions.”
Girandola offered his students 5% extra credit points for participating in JEP, where they’d visit schools in the local area to bring the nutrition curriculum he developed to younger students.
“My goal is to get these kids interested in moving, which will maybe get them motivated to do some exercise.”
Nearly 50 years later, Girandola is still pioneering new ways to get kids involved and invested in their physical health. Last fall, he reached out to JEP about a possible partnership with a developer of fitness equipment who had just created a prototype for mini-treadmills. These devices were small enough to fit under desks, and Bob found that students in K-12 schools could use them under their desks and have promising calorie expenditure results.
Girandola paired up with JEP to pilot the mini-tread program in one of our partner schools this semester. USC students in one of his classes formed a team to teach students about nutrition, physical health, and fitness, all while incorporating the equipment into the lessons.
This is just one example of the countless ways in which JEP is working to expand its program offerings to the organizations they work with!
Girandola says that while his own students tend “not to talk to him” about their own JEP experiences, the comments from the teachers he works with underscore how much these participants mean to these classrooms.
“They always talk about how [our USC students] are wonderful and how much they’re going to miss them,” he says. “That’s consistent.”