Join us in celebrating two of our alumnae and one current student athlete who are competing in the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games. These three world class athletes represent the largest number of BSE students to compete in a single Olympics.
Georgia Bell MA '17 is a middle distance runner competing for Great Britain; Camryn Rogers MA '24 is a hammer thrower competing for Canada; and Caisa-Marie Lindfors, who is currently pursuing her MA in Education, is a discus thrower competing for Sweden. (Alumna Sydney Collins MA '23 was a defender on Canada’s 2024 Olympic women's soccer team but suffered an injury just before the Paris games.)
Each of these athletes is part of BSE’s Cultural Studies of Sport in Education program (CSSE), a master’s degree program that examines the impact sports has on society and culture and that is designed to produce leaders – in and out of athletics. CSSE has an unabashed focus on equity and commitment to investigating how institutionalized sport both conflicts with and complements the educational missions of American K-12 and post-secondary schools.
“It is so exciting to have our BSE students competing for their respective countries in the Paris Olympics in the coming weeks,” said Adjunct Professor Derek Van Rheenen, CSSE’s faculty director. “We've had several Olympians in the past but never this many at one of these mega events. The fact that they are all women is also amazing! I am so proud of Georgia, Camryn, and Caisa! And Sydney, too. It is too bad she's injured.”
A recent gift from Berkeley alumnus H. Michael Williams, BA '82 P'22 and his wife Jeanne will support the expansion of the CSSE program.
“The Williams family's vision is for CSSE to be internationally renowned for its focus on sports leadership and advocacy. Having these incredible women as ambassadors not only for their countries but for the Berkeley School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley punctuates that international prestige of our scholar athletes and leaders,” Van Rheenen said.
