SUNY Cortland News

    Lynn Couturier, head of the Health and Physical Education Department at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, will join SUNY Cortland on Monday, Aug. 4, as professor and chair of the Physical Education Department.
    Couturier of Griswold, Conn., will replace Jerome Casciani, who has overseen the department almost continuously since 1990 and will retire on Aug. 30.
    Reporting to the dean of professional studies, Couturier will direct one of the largest undergraduate physical education teacher education programs in the country. The Physical Education Department is the largest department on campus in terms of the number of majors served, including roughly 950 undergraduate and graduate students.
    Couturier is charged with managing and advocating for a complex program with a growing and evolving graduate curriculum as well as working to enhance diversity on the campus. She will serve as department chair to 16 full-time faculty members and 20 part-time faculty members and student teacher supervisors. She is responsible for the teaching supervision of the 18 coaches in Athletics whose duties include teaching part-time in the Physical Education Department.
    At the New London, Conn.-based Coast Guard Academy since 2003, Couturier currently leads a program where students must meet Coast Guard professional competencies and enhance their knowledge of fitness and wellness and develop skills necessary for participation in lifetime physical activity.
    She supervises 13 full-time faculty members while teaching courses, providing program leadership, managing the department budget, administering the physical fitness examination for the entire student body each semester and providing oversight for the summer program. She serves on the Dean's Cabinet, Academic Council and the Labor-Management Relations Committee.
    From 2001-03, she served as director of physical education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she oversaw a required undergraduate Physical Education Program that averaged 7,000 registrations each year.
    In addition to supervising and evaluating 20 full-time faculty members and coaches and 15 part-time instructors, she developed the department's Physical Education Instructor's Handbook and Director of Physical Education Manual.
    Couturier previously served as graduate coordinator at Springfield College from 1988-2001. She joined as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 1995. As graduate coordinator during her entire career at Springfield, she developed and implemented policies for graduate programs, facilitated curriculum revision and monitored the academic progress of graduate students. While at Springfield, she chaired the Physical Education Teaching and Administration Department between 1998-2000, served as interim chair in 1994 and as assistant department chair from 1990-95. Couturier was the head women's lacrosse coach at Springfield and, from 1983-86, was a teaching fellow.
    Couturier taught physical education at Burgess Elementary School in Sturbridge, Mass., in 1988. For the prior four years, she coached field hockey, junior varsity basketball and officiated track and field at Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham, Mass.
    She earned a Bachelor of Science in Physical Education from Springfield College in 1981 and became certified to teach kindergarten through 12th grade physical education and health. She received a Master of Science in Biomechanics from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Ill., in 1985 and a Doctor of Physical Education from Springfield College in 1986. Her doctoral dissertation was on "Exercise as a Predictor of Body-Cathexis and Self-Concept in Pregnant Women." Couturier also obtained a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies from the University of Massachusetts in 2002 and a Master of Arts in American Studies, with honors, from Trinity College in 2007. Her thesis theme was "Considering the Sportswoman, 1924-1936."
    She has a son, Seth, who is a chef living in Holland, Mass., and a daughter, Alyssa, who graduates from Savannah College of Art and Design in May and plans to pursue a career in costume design.