Conflict of Interest: The authors have no professional relationships with companies or manufacturers who will benefit from the results of the present study. The results of the present study do not constitute endorsement of the products by the authors.
Financial Support: This study was not supported financially.
Correspondence: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Steven Ross Murray, DA, MS, Physical Education Program, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720. Email: smurray@berkeley.edu
American college students today are enduring an increasing number of stressors and the concomitant psychiatric struggles, such as anxiety and depression, which impair both their academic performance and social functioning and are associated with long-term health problems (Zhai and Du 2024). Physical activity is an inexpensive, readily available, and efficacious treatment for depression and anxiety, often rivaling the effects of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy, but with distinct advantages related to lower expense, fewer side effects, and increased secondary health benefits (Singh et al. 2023). Unfortunately, physical activity rarely is prescribed for therapeutic purposes despite its obvious advantages (Kvam et al. 2016; Schuch and Stubbs 2019; Schuch et al. 2018; Singh et al. 2023), even in ideal environments such as higher education, where physical activity certainly could be introduced, if not required, through physical education (Cardinal 2017, 2020; Murray et al. 2024; Szarabajko and Cardinal 2024). Despite incontrovertible evidence indicating the effectiveness of physical education on students’ overall health and wellness, its prevalence in higher education as a graduation requirement has declined substantially since its founding in American colleges and universities during the 19th century (Cardinal and Casebolt 2022; Murray et al. 2024; Szarabajko and Cardinal 2024). The decline is shocking considering research indicates students earning their degrees from colleges and universities with higher requirements for physical activity exhibit “more positive exercise attitudes and behaviors” (Adams and Brynteson 1992, 148; Brynteson and Adams 1993; Cardinal et al. 2002; Keating et al. 2005), which, in turn, result in higher levels of individual health and wellness (Barney et al. 2014; Murray et al. 2024) as well as improved public health (Cardinal 2016).
Since the 1800s, in the American academe, physical activity has been part of the common curriculum within physical education (often called basic instruction programs, college and university physical activity programs, instructional physical activity programs, etc.) where “to keep in good health the whole body” (Hitchcock 1878, 47) has been both the founding and the guiding tenet. Over the last two centuries, physical education’s role in American colleges and universities has fluctuated from being foundational, with some 96 to 97 percent of the faculties at institutions of higher education requiring it for graduation in the decades after the first World War (Cardinal and Casebolt 2022; Greene 1945; Zakrajsek 1994), to inessential, if not adventitious, with a purported 31.7 percent of faculties mandating it as a graduation requirement as late as 2022, and another 12.1 percent partially requiring it (Szarabajko and Cardinal 2024; while beyond the scope of this article, a detailed, historical review of physical education programming in American higher education can be read in Murray et al. 2024).
In 2019, Heumann and Murray (2019) announced a call for research regarding the status of physical education in institutions of higher education, on a state-by-state basis, to gather the most up-to-date and accurate information available. To our knowledge, since that call was initiated, five such studies have been published on the following states: Arizona (Murray and Heumann 2024), Colorado (Heumann and Murray 2019), Oregon (Szarabajko et al. 2021), Texas (Ladd 2023, community colleges only), and Utah (Murray et al. 2021). This study constitutes the sixth state-level analysis of physical education programming within traditional tertiary institutions, focusing specifically on the curricula of the colleges and university in the state of Wyoming.
Methods
Participants
The methodology employed to determine the participants for the previous studies on Arizona, Colorado, and Utah (Murray and Heumann 2024; Heumann and Murray 2019; Murray et al. 2021, respectively) were incorporated in this study. Using the website of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (n.d.), a list of Wyoming’s tertiary educational institutions was acquired to include only the traditional, non-profit, two-year and four-year, brick-and-mortar institutions. Brick-and-mortar institutions were defined as those schools offering “a comprehensive curriculum, with a general education component, often based in the liberal arts” (Murray et al. 2021, 86). For-profit or specialized institutions were not included because they generally neither offer physical education courses nor have general education requirements. An additional brick-and-mortar institution familiar to the authors, Wyoming Catholic College, was added to the list because it is fully accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (Wyoming Catholic College 2018) but was missing from the NCES’s database due to data-collection dates and the timing of the college’s accreditation. Ultimately, nine tertiary educational institutions were reviewed (see Table 1 in Appendix A1).
Procedure
Except for using the latest available catalogs (2024-2025) and institutional websites, the procedures were identical to Heumann and Murray (2019), Murray et al. (2021), Szarabajko et al. (2021), and Murray and Heumann (2024), where each institution’s website was searched for the undergraduate requirements for graduation and the physical education courses offered. As with the previous studies referenced above, the operational definition for physical education, as defined by Tomaino et al. (2001), was used:
Physical education was considered any activity or academic course pertaining to health, wellness, sports, or physical activity. For the course to be considered “required,” it had to be listed by the institution as a requirement for graduation. If not, it was considered an elective. (p. 10)
The types of physical education courses offered were collected. With respect to health or wellness courses, those courses (e.g., public health, sociology of health) not specifically focused on personal health were not considered physical education courses. The availability of campus recreation centers and the attendant recreational programming was assessed to better compare to the results of the Arizonan, Oregonian, and Utahn studies referenced earlier. Moreover, information on dance courses and academic units focused on dance was collected to broaden comparisons of for-credit academic courses involving physical activity. All information gathered and used was publicly available and did not involve human contact, so approval from an official Institutional Review Board was unwarranted.
Analysis
The data analysis was identical to Murray and Heumann (2024) and involved determining the total number of traditional institutions of higher education operating within the state. Each institution’s catalog and website were reviewed for courses and requirements, and the totals for programs that required physical education, either fully or partially, were determined. Each author independently verified the data, with all in agreement. The percentages were calculated by dividing the number of institutions requiring courses by the total number reviewed.
Results
Information on physical education in Wyoming’s tertiary educational institutions is listed in Table 1 (see Appendix A1), and the specific courses offered by institutions are displayed in Table 2 (see Appendix A2). All institutions (100%, i.e., 9 of 9) offered physical education courses. Three (33%, i.e., 3 of 9) colleges required physical education for all students to earn their respective degrees (see Table 3 in Appendix A3), and two (22%, i.e., 2 of 9) institutions, one community college and one research university, had partial requirements. A partial requirement was defined as where “some degrees required some sort of physical education course, or physical education courses were listed as an option to fulfill a specific requirement” (Murray et al. 2021, 86). With respect to recreational programming, each (100%, i.e., 9 of 9) college or university had a campus recreation center, complete with associated programming. Four institutions (44%, i.e., 4 of 9) had academic units specializing in or offering dance courses, such as a Department of Theatre and Dance.
Discussion
Physical education is well represented in Wyoming’s traditional colleges and university, with 100 percent (i.e., 9 of 9) of the institutions offering courses within the discipline. Thirty-three percent (i.e., 3 of 9) of the faculties are mandating physical education as a graduation requirement at their respective institutions, and 22 percent (i.e., 2 of 9) are partially requiring physical education courses for certain degrees. The former rate is consistent with and corroborates the purported current national rate of 31.7 percent, while the latter rate is nearly twice the reported national rate of 12.1 percent for partial requirements (Szarabajko and Cardinal 2024). Moreover, Wyoming’s summative rate for both required and partially required physical education is 55 percent, which is over 11 points higher than the national rate of 43.8 percent (Szarabajko and Cardinal 2024) and is similar to Arizona’s rate of 51.72 percent (Murray and Heumann 2024).
Wyoming’s 33-percent rate for required physical education contradicts the recent trend reported in prior research on America’s western states. Murray and Heumann (2024) note:
[T]he trend for Colorado, Oregon, Texas (for two-year institutions), Utah, and now, Arizona is that these states all are below the currently reported national rate. Is this just a regional trend? Are states west of the Mississippi River – the traditional landmark separating the East from the West in the United States – less likely to require physical education? (pp. 40-41)
The answers to these questions are confounded with the results from Wyoming. Wyoming’s rate of 33 percent more than doubles the rate of Colorado’s 15.6 percent [5 of 32; Heumann and Murray (2019)] and Oregon’s 14.29 percent [5 of 35; Szarabajko et al. (2021)]. Moreover, it is over three times the 10-percent rate of Utah [1 of 10; Murray et al. (2021)] and completely overshadows the six-percent and zero-percent rates of Texas [3 of 50 community colleges only; Ladd (2023)] and Arizona [0 of 29; Murray and Heumann (2024)], respectively. These results raise the following questions: Are Wyoming’s results more representative of the American West in general? Why are the faculties at Wyoming’s tertiary educational institutions offering and requiring physical education more readily than the faculties at their neighboring states’ colleges and universities?
The answer to the first question is unknown until further research is conducted on more western states in the United States of America (USA). Information is available on Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Texas (N.B., community colleges only), Utah, and now, Wyoming (see Table 3, Appendix A), but traditionally, 22 states make up “The American West,” or the area west of the Mississippi River of the contiguous USA (Weber State University, n.d.). To answer this question appropriately, information is needed on the following states: Arkansas, California, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas (for four-year institutions), and Washington. We would encourage more scholars to assess and to report the physical education offerings and requirements in these states for each traditional tertiary educational institution so that accurate comparisons can be made.
With respect to the second question about why Wyoming’s faculty may be more likely to offer physical education courses, historical information on the graduation requirements of the state’s flagship institution, the University of Wyoming, may answer it. According to the State of Wyoming Legislature (n.d.) in a document titled “University of Wyoming University Studies Program (General Education requirements),” the university has long held specific requirements:
A general studies program has a long history at the University of Wyoming. The University Studies Program [USP] was first instituted in 1991. Prior to 1991, students were required to complete two courses in freshmen English, two semesters of physical education [emphasis added], a course in state and national constitutions, and college-specific requirements. (p. 1)
Consequently, many community colleges historically offered, or even required, physical education courses to facilitate credit transfer to the University of Wyoming and to promote faster graduation rates for their transfer students. The evidence for this is scattered throughout the catalogs of various community colleges, with references to physical education requirements and how they align with the University of Wyoming’s requirements. A perfect example is the following statement from the catalog of Central Wyoming College (2024):
Varsity Rodeo will satisfy the [physical education] activity requirement at Central Wyoming College. However, students should be advised that when transferring to the University of Wyoming, varsity sport will not satisfy that institution’s [physical education] requirement. (p. 362)
With respect to the USP at the University of Wyoming, over the years multiple reviews and changes occurred, first aligning the requirements “with the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) essential learning outcomes” and second “to reduce and streamline the number of semester hours required to meet the general studies requirement” from 42 to 30 (State of Wyoming Legislature, n.d., 1). These changes occurred in 2003 – were revised in 2015 and again in 2022 and currently are undergoing review – and the requirement of “two semesters of physical education” was removed from the USP. However, under the “Personal and Social Responsibility” section of the document, it was noted that “[s]tudents should become more personally and socially responsible while pursuing their bachelor’s degrees… [including] …to cultivate one’s mental and physical wellness” (p. 6). The designers of the new USP state:
At [the University of Wyoming], there are many opportunities infused throughout coursework, program requirements, and co-curricular activities to help students further develop personal and social responsibility. These include service learning, internships, externships, club sports, athletics, ASUW leadership opportunities and sponsored organizations, Greek life, and professional societies. Because of the variety of offerings at [the University of Wyoming], students will have unique experiences. As such, gains in personal and social responsibility will differ from student to student (State of Wyoming Legislature, n.d., 6).
The writers of the document go on, under the “Personal Health and Wellness,” section, to write:
Students will understand the implications of health and lifestyle choices for themselves and society. Through coursework and co-curricular activities, students will:
- Understand the relations among factors such as tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, nutrition, sleep, stress, leisure, and health related fitness activities as they influence personal wellness.
- Examine short and long-term consequences of health-related choices on personal well-being, academic performance, overall quality of life, and society at large.
- Analyze how social and cultural factors affect personal health and lifestyle choices.
- Engage in behaviors that lead to improved health and wellness (State of Wyoming Legislature, n.d., 7).
These are worthy outcomes we fully support, but we question how they can be realized effectively among the undergraduate population given the current curricular requirements at the University of Wyoming. As it is now, students are no longer required to take physical education courses at the university, but they are to develop skills to “cultivate one’s mental and physical wellness” via “co-curricular activities” (State of Wyoming Legislature, n.d., 6). While we do accept that cross-curricular and co-curricular learning are possibilities and something to be supported, to us, this approach is akin to students developing skills in a specific academic discipline, say English, by simply perusing items in the university’s library on the students’ own personal time instead of being taught the skills by a qualified instructor in a course within the respective required curriculum. In essence, it is a matter of relying on wishful thinking rather than on evidence-based education to achieve the desired outcomes. We are unconvinced of the efficacy of such a strategy, but, unfortunately, it is neither novel nor unique and has a well-documented history in American academe.
Many colleges and university are having their administrators employ such techniques for curricular development, and, as a result, required physical education programming has been declining in the American academe (Murray et al. 2024; Szarabajko and Cardinal 2024). What frequently occurs is that administrators begin integrating student well-being into student services programming, such as campus life or campus recreation, citing a “new model” (National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education 2017), and physical education activity programs are eliminated (Murray et al. 2024).
The so-called “new model,” however, is far from new. A perfect example of this can be found in the official administrative records of the Department of Physical Education at the University of California, San Diego [UC San Diego], where, in 1994, the department “was disestablished… in a period of declining budgets, [and] …the department’s classes and functions were merged with those of the campus Recreation department” (University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), n.d.-a, 1). Unfortunately, decades later, for-credit physical education activity courses, as of this writing, still are not offered at UC San Diego, despite the fact that the institution currently states on its website as advice for its students: “Physical activity is one of the best things you can do in your daily routine to live a healthier lifestyle and improve your overall well-being!” (University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), n.d.-b).
Similar situations occurred more recently at the College of William and Mary in Virginia [henceforth referred to as William & Mary] and at the University of California, Davis [UC Davis], where administrators chose to eliminate physical activity courses (Murray et al. 2024). Bewilderingly, at William & Mary, according to its then-president, the elimination of physical activity courses occurred with the full support of the faculty within the Department of Kinesiology (Murray et al. 2024), but at UC Davis, the courses were eliminated against the desires of both the university’s faculty association (Davis Faculty Association, n.d.) and its students (Greenblatt 2021).
Beyond the outright elimination of physical activity courses, another related trend has emerged in higher education: institutions are removing physical activity graduation requirements by “embedding” health and wellness content into first-year experience courses. Starting in the summer of 2025, Oregon State University (OSU) replaced its long-standing Bacc Core curriculum and eliminated its mandatory health and physical fitness course requirement, instead incorporating potentially limited health and well-being content into a new first-year “transition” course (Oregon State University, n.d.; Skipper 2025). Notably, this change occurred despite OSU students having previously voted their health and wellness course requirement as one of the “Best of 2020 Bacc Core Courses” (Darstaad 2020). Although students may still be exposed to health and well-being topics, they are no longer required to participate in physical activity courses. This curricular shift updates prior findings from Szarabajko et al. (2021) and suggests that the proportion of Oregon’s tertiary educational institutions that maintain a full physical education requirement has continued to decline.
These administrative decisions may be interpreted as reflecting a diminished institutional emphasis on students’ holistic development, particularly in health and wellness, and consequently as representing a departure from the principle of cura personalis — the cultivation of the whole individual — especially from the perspective of faculty in kinesiology. To us, it is unfathomable that kinesiology faculty members would support such a decision, as it runs counter to the raison d’être of the discipline (Heumann and Murray 2019; Zelaznik and Harper 2007). One might consider a parallel scenario in which the faculty within a Department of English reduced or eliminated required freshman composition courses following the introduction of auxiliary and voluntary reading and writing programs housed within the institution’s library and supported through student fees. In many institutional contexts, such a transition would likely prompt substantial discussion among faculty and administrators regarding the continuing role of required foundational coursework within the undergraduate curriculum, if not outright resistance from many faculty members and administrators. Nevertheless, this type of situation reflects precisely what is befalling instructional physical activity programs across the country (Murray et al. 2024; Murray and Heumann 2024; Szarabajko and Cardinal 2024).
The underpinnings of these decisions, however, are almost always financial. With auxiliary student services generally supported by fees rather than tuition (Taylor et al. 2003), the financial incentives for administrators are simply too advantageous to disregard, even if they run counter to students’ best interests. Murray and Heumann (2024) go on to describe this phenomenon:
With students willing to essentially tax themselves with a recurring fee for recreational programming, administrators can then reduce or eliminate required physical education and reallocate funding to enhance other academic disciplines. The administrators look at it as a win-win scenario: The physical activity needs of the students are addressed, however modestly and in all likelihood ineffectively, with voluntary recreational programming (from a volitional fee, no less), and instructional resources then can be redirected [even though] the research regarding the effectiveness of voluntary recreational programming has shown it to have modest efficacy, often only for a minority of students, and generally serving mostly the already fit and highly motivated students. (pp. 41-42)
Regrettably, it seems this same scenario has transpired at the University of Wyoming. According to information informally communicated by a faculty member at the institution, kinesiology faculty appear to have had limited involvement in the institutional deliberations surrounding the removal of the physical education requirement; the physical education requirement was removed “as part of the overall task of reducing the total number of general credit hours to be taken by all university students” (anonymous professor to protect confidentiality, personal communication, February 26, 2025). Conversely, the University of Wyoming has a well-equipped recreation center and ample attendant programming (University of Wyoming, n.d.).
With respect to campus recreation, every Wyoming institution of higher education (100%; i.e., 9 of 9) had some form of a recreation center and related programming. Wyoming’s perfect score matches that of Utah [100%; i.e., 10 of 10; Murray et al. (2021)] and is superior to the percentages reported for Arizona [89.65%, i.e., 26 of 29; Murray and Heumann (2024)] and Oregon [65.71%; i.e., 23 of 35; Szarabajko et al. (2021)]; recreational programming data were not published within the studies on Colorado and Texas, so that is another area suitable for future research. The data regarding Wyoming’s tertiary educational institutions support the assertion of Murray and Heumann (2024) spurred by the data from Arizona’s colleges and universities:
By looking at these data, it seems the faculty and administrators in Arizona are replacing required physical education with voluntary recreational programming to meet their students’ health and wellness needs. More research is needed in this area, and specific questioning of key administrators and faculty as to why recreational programming and not required physical education is implemented on their campuses is needed. (p. 41)
The results from this investigation, once again, support the call for specific research on why administrators and faculty continue to prefer voluntary recreational programming over required physical education on college and university campuses, specifically with the past literature indicating that the former is less effective than the latter because it caters to those already active and with higher fitness levels (Kim and Cardinal 2019a, 2019b), has limited participation (NIRSA: Leaders in Collegiate Recreation, n.d.), often neglects marginalized populations (Hoang et al. 2016; Wilson et al. 2021, 2020), and, as such, is less likely to develop all individual students’ health and wellness (Murray et al. 2024).
Regarding campus recreation, however, we want to be clear. We support it in its entirety and believe it to be an asset to a campus’s mission. Our view is best explained by the following quote:
Our philosophical view is that physical education should be provided and required of every undergraduate student. In addition, voluntary recreational programming should also be available so that the students can work on the skills they are learning in their physical education courses and make them lifelong habits. We believe educational and recreational programming should work symbiotically and neither be an “either-or” situation nor a parasitic relationship; one should not take away from the other. Instead, the two should work in unison to develop the whole individual, enhance individual student wellness, and help tertiary educational institutions return to the cura personalis mission of education (Murray and Heumann 2024, 42).
Previous studies have examined state-level physical activity — specifically adult physical inactivity outside of work — using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), n.d.). In earlier analyses, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Arizona, and Texas ranked first, second, seventh, 19th, and 40th, respectively (Murray and Heumann 2024), while Wyoming currently ranks 20th (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), n.d.). In the most recent rankings, Colorado and Utah remain first and second, with Oregon, Arizona, and Texas ranked sixth, 17th, and 39th, respectively. Wyoming presents an instructive case. Like Utah, it offers physical education at all institutions, yet a higher proportion requires it for graduation [33% vs. 0%; Murray et al. (2021)]. Although the available data remain insufficient for definitive conclusions, Wyoming’s position appears consistent with a broader pattern: States with higher physical activity levels may offer physical education widely in higher education without mandating it (Murray and Heumann 2024). Further research is needed to evaluate the relationship between state-level activity rates and institutional physical education requirements, particularly in “The American West,” to make valid comparisons.
Although every Wyoming tertiary educational institution offers physical education courses, one institution stands out for its curriculum and programming. Wyoming Catholic College uses a mind-body-spirit approach to its educational mission, and most students engage in various physical activities such as dances and intramural sports as well as “hike, bike, backpack, rock climb, ski, hunt, [and] fish…” in their free time to “celebrate life as embodied creatures” (Wyoming Catholic College, n.d.). In fact, all students must take mandatory courses “to promote their general physical and emotional health,” and these courses include the following: Freshman Orientation Expedition, Winter Expedition, and Horsemanship, for three credits each, and then a one-credit course each semester thereafter involving a week-long expedition (Wyoming Catholic College 2024, 9, 50–52). The Freshman Orientation Expedition course involves students arriving to campus about a month before the start of the fall semester to prepare for the course. Its description is as follows:
The first course taken by every student at Wyoming Catholic College is [Freshman Orientation Expedition]. This course consists of a two and a half day Wilderness First Aid Course, two days of trip preparation, including renting personal gear, packing food, front-country lessons covering safety, etc., and a 21-day backpacking expedition. The classroom for our wilderness course is the rugged, glacier carved Rocky Mountains of Wyoming. Wyoming’s mountains are renowned for their remote wilderness setting, glistening lakes, stunning vistas, and abundance of flora and fauna. In this awe-inspiring environment, students learn how to read maps, navigate routes on and off trail, live for three weeks with nothing but what is carried on their backs, safely cross rivers, and cook meals on a portable stove. What is more, the wilderness puts students in the near occasion of wonder. Students are given the opportunity to grow in the cardinal virtues and develop leadership skills that will last a lifetime. Students will bond with their classmates as they team up to meet and surmount the real challenges presented by wilderness travel. This trip sets up the freshmen well for their first semester at Wyoming Catholic College by providing various challenges as well as creating a strong community with their classmates once they return back to campus life (Wyoming Catholic College 2024, 50).
Another week-long Freshman Expedition course, held between the fall and spring semesters, focuses on winter activities, including building snow caves for outdoor camping and other snow-related activities. During a conversation with the College’s Vice President for Outdoor Formation and Executive Director of COR, or Catholic Outdoor Renewal, Expeditions, he indicated the essence of the program was, “Teaching the students virtue through the outdoors: For the students to be outside, to stargaze, to get their fingers dirty, and above all, to move.” He went on:
Being outdoors teaches the students that the mind and the body can be controlled. The students are involved in various courses outside of the Freshman Expedition, often in cohorts. We have courses in snow caving, skiing, horsemanship, week-long trips in the wilderness involving rafting, hiking, canoeing, caving, ice climbing, and sea kayaking, for example.” (Thomas Zimmer, PhD, personal communication, March 24, 2025)
To us, this immersive educational environment, centering the physicality as a modality to educate students on a multidimensional model – mind-body-spirit [essentially Dunn’s (1959) original model for wellness] – to complement a traditional liberal arts curriculum, is truly a quintessential program of physical education. It hearkens to the days of Williams’s (1930) philosophy of “education through the physical” while inherently encompassing McCloy’s “education of the physical” (English 1983), essentially fulfilling the mission of cura personalis. While we recognize that this program is challenging to implement at all tertiary educational institutions, it could serve as a model for other programs to emulate, if only in part, not in its entirety.
Lastly, 88.88% (i.e., 8 of 9) of Wyoming’s higher-education institutions offer specific courses in personal health or wellness, with the lone school not offering one, Wyoming Catholic College, having a holistic curriculum, with no electives, but centered around the development of the whole individual to promote each student’s “general physical and emotional health” (Wyoming Catholic College, n.d.). As such, we would classify this as a unique situation and state that all traditional higher education institutions in Wyoming offer courses addressing personal health and wellness. Recent research on the top 25 American public tertiary educational institutions revealed that each also offered courses in personal health, wellness, or a similar topic (Murray et al. 2024), indicating that Wyoming’s colleges and university are aligned with these prestigious institutions.
All research has limitations. This investigation mimicked the same data-collection techniques used in Murray et al. (2021), and as such, the same limitations apply, where “data were taken from the most up-to-date information available from each institution’s website [or catalog], but the precise offerings for each institution are unknown. Further, the filtering of the institutions based on the traditional brick-and-mortar criterion was a limitation and affected the sample size” (p. 90).
Conclusion
American academe has encouraged physical activity since the 19th century to improve both the mental and physical health of its students. Students today are undergoing high levels of stress, adversely affecting their psychological and physiological health, often with long-term consequences. Overwhelming research indicates that physical activity is beneficial for the treatment of psychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety (Singh et al. 2023), but paradoxically, required physical education in colleges and universities has been trending downward over the last few decades despite its incontrovertible evidence of efficacy (Szarabajko and Cardinal 2024). In 2019, Heumann and Murray issued a call for more state-level research on the status of physical education in tertiary educational institutions, and Szarabajko et al. (2021), Murray et al. (2021), Ladd (2023), and Murray and Heumann (2024) answered that call by studying Oregonian, Utahn, Texan, and Arizonan colleges and universities, respectively. This investigation adds to the literature by providing information on the status of physical education within the colleges and university of Wyoming and noting potentially a quintessential physical activity program for physical education to fulfill the mission of cura personalis in academe.
References
Appendix A1
Requirements for physical education in Wyoming’s colleges and university
| Institution | Type | Required PE | Nature of Requirement | Health & Wellness Courses | Campus Rec. | Dance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Casper College | 2-year, Public | Full; Health & Wellness Req. (1CR) | Either | PEAC 1001 Health and Wellness (HW) | Yes; T-Bird Fitness Center | Dance Program |
| Central Wyoming College | 4-year, Public; primarily associate’s | Not currently | Activity | HLED 1281 Health and Wellness; HLED 1282 Exercise, Health, & Wellness | Yes; shared facility | None |
| Eastern Wyoming College | 2-year, Public | Full; PE Activity Requirement (1) | Activity | PEAC 1001 Health and Wellness (HW) | Yes; fitness center | None |
| Laramie County CC | 4-year, primarily assoc., Public | None | None | HLED 1006 Personal Health (3) | Yes; Recreation and Athletics Complex | None |
| Northern Wyoming CC District | 2-year, Public | None | None | PEAC 1001 Health and Wellness (2); HLED 1281 (1); HLED 1006 Personal Health (3) | Yes; Sheridan College Fitness Center | Theater and Dance |
| Northwest College | 4-year, primarily assoc., Public | None | None | HLED 1003 Wellness (3); HLED 1006 Personal Health (3); HLED 1271 Diet and Exercise (2) | Yes; Johnson Fitness Center | None |
| University of Wyoming | 4-year, Public | Partial; USP | Lecture | HLED 1006 Personal Health (3); HLED 3020 Community and Public Health (3); ORTM 1010 Wellness Through Recreation (3) | Yes; Campus Recreation | Theatre and Dance |
| Western Wyoming CC | 4-year, primarily assoc., Public | Partial; Western Experience (1–2 cr) | Either | HLED 1003 Wellness (3); HLED 1141 Nutrition | Yes; Aquatic and Fitness Center | Dance in Musical Theatre |
| Wyoming Catholic College | 4-year, Private | Full; every student required (15 cr) | Both | None | Yes; fitness and aquatic center | NA |
Appendix A2
Physical activity courses offered at Wyoming’s colleges and university
| Institution | List of activity courses offered |
|---|---|
| Casper College | PEAC 1015 Beginning Scuba (HW); PEAC 1020 Fitness Training (HW); PEAC 1030 Dance Aerobics; PEAC 1041 Basic Self-Defense (HW); PEAC 1294 Beginning Yoga (HW); PEAC 1460 Modern Dance I (HW); PEAC 1680 Extreme Fitness (HW); PEAC 2001 Physical Fitness and Wellness I (HW); (and others) |
| Central Wyoming College | PEAC 1000 Fitness; PEAC 1009 Recreational Games; PEAC 1011 Aquatic Conditioning; OEAC 1175 Ice Climbing; OEAC 1258 Skiing and Snowboarding; OEAC 1287 Outdoor Rock Climbing; (and others) |
| Eastern Wyoming College | PEAC 1008 Lifetime Sports; PEAC 1032 Aerobic Conditioning I; PEAC 1253 Beginning Bowling; PEAC 1273 Weight Training and Conditioning I; PEAC 1294 Beginning Yoga; (and others) |
| Laramie County CC | PEAC 1011 Aquatic Conditioning; PEAC 1026 Zumba; PEAC 1046 Introduction to Pilates; PEAC 1294 Beginning Yoga; PEAC 2011 Intermediate Swimming; (and others) |
| Northern Wyoming CC District | PEAC 1000 Fitness; PEAC 1001 Health and Wellness (2); PEAC 1040 Tai Chi; PEAC 1273 Weight Training and Conditioning; (and others) |
| Northwest College | PEAC 1049 Indoor Cycling; OEAC 1100 Outdoor Living Skills: Desert; OEAC 1285 Whitewater Kayaking I; OEAC 1287 Outdoor Rock Climbing; (and others) |
| University of Wyoming | PEAC 1001 Physical Activity and Your Health (1); PEAC 2000 Wellness: Physical, Nutrition, and Lifestyle (1–3) |
| Western Wyoming CC | PEAC 1000 Fitness; PEAC 1254 Snowboard Riding I; PEAC 1258 Downhill Skiing I; PEAC 1287 Rock Climbing I; PEAC 1297 Whitewater Rafting; (and others) |
| Wyoming Catholic College | ELP 101 Freshman Expedition (3); ELP 102 Winter Expedition (3); EQS 201 Horsemanship (3); ELP 201, 202, 301, 302, 401, 402 (1) |
Appendix A3
Known physical education in colleges and universities of the states of “The American West”
| State (Reference) | Number (%) of Institutions Offering PE Courses | Number (%) of Institutions Requiring PE Courses |
|---|---|---|
| Arizona (Murray & Heumann, 2024) | 24 of 29 (82.75%) | 0 of 29 (0%) |
| Colorado (Heumann & Murray, 2019) | 27 of 32 (84.4%) | 5 of 32 (15.6%) |
| Oregon (Szarabajko et al., 2021) | 30 of 35 (85.7%) | 5 of 35 (14.29%) |
| Texas* (Ladd, 2023) | 49 of 50 (98%) | 3 of 50 (6%) |
| Utah (Murray et al., 2021) | 10 of 10 (100%) | 1 of 10 (10%) |
| Wyoming (Murray et al., current study) | 9 of 9 (100%) | 3 of 9 (33%) |
* N.B., community colleges only
Citation
@article{ross_murray2026,
author = {Ross Murray, Steven and Szarabajko, Alexandra and Heumann
McKinney, Kristin},
publisher = {Western Society for Kinesiology and Wellness},
title = {The {Status} of {Physical} {Education} in {Wyoming’s}
{Colleges} and {University:} {Has} a {Quintessential} {Physical}
{Activity} {Program} {Been} {Identified?}},
journal = {Journal of Kinesiology and Wellness},
volume = {15},
number = {1},
date = {2026},
url = {https://doi.org/10.56980/jkw.v15i1.198},
doi = {10.56980/jkw.v15i1.198},
issn = {2323-4505},
langid = {en},
abstract = {College and university students undergo many stressors
that negatively affect their academic performance and health.
Physical activity is a well-known treatment for stress, yet it is
reportedly falling out of favor as a required component of physical
education in the curricula of many institutions of higher education.
Recent research has examined several states’ curricular offerings
and requirements to better assess the status of physical education
across America. This study examined the standing of physical
education in Wyoming’s colleges and university to compare to the
recently published data. The specific graduation requirements and
course offerings of each institution were analyzed. Of Wyoming’s
nine traditional higher-education institutions, all nine (100\%)
offer physical education courses, and three (33\%) mandate physical
education as a graduation standard for all undergraduate students.
Another two (22\%) institutions have physical education as a
mandate, either as a general education choice or as a requirement
within a specific discipline. While these results do not reflect the
current trend of declining interest in physical education in the
American academe, longitudinal research over the coming years is
needed to see if this pattern persists. More research is needed in
other states to better understand the true status of physical
education in higher education, especially given that physical
activity is an efficacious treatment for distress and its associated
ailments.}
}