Beginning this semester, a new fitness lab is open to the students of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

Since 2005, the department chair of the physical education department and associate professor Colleen McCabe has had visions of a new fitness lab being built to benefit health promotion students and aspiring physical education teachers.

Located on the northwest corner of Williams Fieldhouse, the new lab resides in an area previously occupied by a rarely used fitness lab and three offices.

The lab offers students a row of exercise bikes, a bio-impedance scale and a testing lab currently used primarily to draw blood.

The lab also includes a metabolic cart to provide scientific analysis on the aerobic ability of a student running on a treadmill.  The measurements of lung capacity and oxygen consumption are extracted to the metabolic cart.

The building of the lab was the result of the collaboration of various departments.

The fitlab construction was aided by Peter Nemmetz and staff from the Physical Plant. Media Technology Services outfitted the room with SMART Board technology.

“We turned it into a high-tech classroom by providing a digital SMART Board that projects directly onto a standard whiteboard,” said Colleen Garrity, Director of Media Technology Services.  “Interactivity comes from a pen that can sync from anywhere in the room to access data.”

In comparison, the lab’s neighboring room is still stuck with chalkboard technology.

“I’ve never worked in such a great collaborative effort here,” McCabe said.  “It was a shared vision between athletics and physical education teaching.”

The new lab has been used to house classes such as exercise physiology, injury prevention and treatment, and fitness evaluation and program prescription.

The fitlab has recieved rave reviews from instructors who rush to schedule their classes in the room and praise the interaction the SMART Board has allowed them to have with their students.

“The fact that I can have a half-hour PowerPoint lesson and have the lab be right there for access is something that has never been done,” said Chris Rotzenberg, who teaches exercise physiology in the new fitness lab.  “It makes my job easier and helps the lessons go more smoothly.”