Dudley Allen Sargent Lecture

Since 1980, the Dudley Allen Sargent Lecture honors the memory of a leader who devoted his professional career to promoting health and fitness for both men and women. Following a brief stint as a circus acrobat, he enrolled as a freshman at Bowdoin College. Sargent supported himself through the years as the director of a college gymnasium for a salary of five dollars per week. His charismatic personality and leadership skills attracted weak and non-athletic males, who were his real concern, as well as the stronger, more highly skilled students. Sargent then moved to Yale, where he earned his medical degree while serving as director of the gymnasium. During this time, he argued for the inclusion of physical exercising as a part of the required coursework. After securing his M.D. in 1878, he opened his own gymnasium in New York City. In 1879, Sargent was invited to fill the position of Director of the Hemenway Gymnasium and Assistant Professor of Physical Training at Harvard, where he remained until retiring in 1919.

During his long and distinguished career, Sargent invented numerous “developing machines,” compiled thousands of anthropometric measurements, educated several generations of physical education teachers (primarily women) through his Harvard Summer School of Physical Education, as well as, the Sargent School for Physical Education. Sargent wrote extensively on the subject of health and fitness, thus significantly influencing the fledgling field. Sargent served ably as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education (AAAPE) for five years, as well as, being the third president (1899) of the Society of Physical Education in College, a forerunner for today’s NAKHE.

Dudley Allen Sargent Lecturers

1980 Marguerite A.Clifton
1982 Louis E. Alley
1983 Earle F. Zeigler
1984 George H. Sage
1985 Warren P. Fraleigh
1987 Roger C. Wiley
1988 David H. Clarke
1989 Edward J. Shea
1990 R. Scott Kretchmar
1991 Wynn F. Updike
1992 Don Hellison
1993 Hal A. Lawson
1994 Ronald S. Feingold
1995 Lawrence F. Locke
1996 James R. Ewers
1997 Richard A. Swanson
1998 Shirl J. Hoffman
1999 John D. Massengale
2000 Robert Christina
2001 John M. Dunn
2002 Charles Corbin
2003 Steve Estes
2004 Robert O. Ruhling
2005 Seymour Kleinman
2006 Robert Stadulis
2007 Thomas L. McKenzie
2008 Mel Finkenberg
2009 Jimmy H. Ishee
2010 Robert Pangrazi
2011 Newton Jackson
2012 David Claxton
2013 John  Charles
2014 Sam Hodge
2015 Doug Hochstetler
2016 Duane Knudson
2017 Jesse Germain
2018 Hans van der Mars
2019 Scott Gordon
2020 Brian Culp
2021 Langston Clark
2022 Desmond Delk
2023 Nathan Hall
2024 Daniel Burt