Character on the field is what matters

A college education is designed to shape well-rounded individuals with high moral character that holds true when challenged, says UO researcher Chris Minson. It’s on a sports playing field, he says, where that effort is best tested.

“Mistakes are opportunities to learn and to improve yourself, and college sports sets the stage for this to happen,” said Minson, who speaks with experience. He raced as a competitive cyclist for the University of Arizona from 1987 to 1989. His past also includes stints as a competitive swimmer, wrestler and skier.

“Being on the national stage places a special challenge on ‘rising to the occasion’ and being the best you can be,” he said. “Everyone wants to do their best while in the spotlight, and win-or-lose, people remember the character of the person even more than the performance.”

For Minson, the head of the UO’s human physiology department, what he learned on the field drove his learning in the classroom.

“I was a psychology major, but always had an interest in sports. As I learned more about training and the effects on the body, I became more interested in how performance and training can be improved by our knowledge of physiology, and how we can learn a lot about physiology by studying it during exercise,” Minson said. “I have continued with this line of interest and it shapes my research.”

Minson primarily studies the impacts of natural and synthetic forms of estrogen and progesterone on cardiovascular health and blood pressure regulation in women.

His research occurs in his department’s state-of-the-art Exercise and Environmental Physiology Laboratories, where exercise physiology, women’s health, altitude-hypoxia and thermoregulation (body-temperature) share center stage. “We study basic physiological mechanisms, often during exercise, and we also study the physiological aspects behind performance in my labs,” he said. “This also includes how the environment impacts both physiology and performance.”