A new Action Plan for academic and co-curricular programs will accelerate progress towards the goals in the Faculty’s academic plan Transformation in Motion, improve the student and student-athlete experience, and make sport and physical activity more accessible and inclusive on campus and beyond, KPE Vice-Dean Ashley Stirling announced at a town hall on May 1, 2025.
The programs Action Plan, the result of extensive review, consultation and feedback, lays out concrete three-year roadmaps for each of the Faculty’s six program areas: sport and recreation, the sport medicine clinic, interuniversity athletics and high performance, registrarial and student services, undergraduate education and graduate education.
“This Action Plan informs strategic direction, creates the opportunity for collaboration across academic and co-curricular program areas and will be used to track progress over time,” says Stirling, noting that program directors will work with their teams over several years to implement it. “It acts as a framework for decision-making, helping teams set short- and long-term goals, allocate resources effectively, and adapt to evolving needs within respective program areas.”
One of the Action Plan’s flagship initiatives, a new Active Healthy Living Centre, will remove barriers to physical activity on campus and promote dialogue around mental health and wellness. Managed by the Sport and Recreation program, the centre will facilitate greater access to our programs for all U of T students.
“We all need to be talking about mental health at U of T. This is a major opportunity to be leading the conversation on physical activity and healthy campuses,” says Stirling.
Other goals include expanding the David L. MacIntosh Sports Medicine Clinic to include a kinesiology clinic, an addition that would further promote exercise as medicine and broaden multidisciplinary comprehensive health care services.
For interuniversity athletics, the Action Plan prioritizes student-athlete development within and beyond sport, which Stirling says begins with excellence in coaching.
“Varsity Blues is Canada’s largest athletic program, and one of its most successful; we will continue this tradition of greatness,” says Stirling. “They say that sport develops leaders, but I believe coaches develop leaders. Supporting coaching excellence is the foundation for student-athlete success.”
For undergraduate students, the plan focuses on modernizing academic administration systems and increasing interdivisional partnerships to enhance the undergraduate experience.
The launch of two new, one-year master’s programs in September—a Master of Sport Sciences and a Master of Kinesiology—will diversify student learning pathways in graduate programming, another goal aimed at better meeting the needs of students.
Across all programs, a common theme in the Action Plan is further developing a Faculty where everyone can thrive—whether that means improving mental health and wellness, removing barriers to access, enhancing technology integration or creating new pathways to success, impact, engagement and leadership.
“U of T is ranked number one in Canada and number four in the world for sports-related disciplines,” says Stirling, “I see this Action Plan as a starting point for conversation—let’s think about the initiatives where students, student-athletes, and the communities we serve will see meaningful, lasting impact.”