Jenna Altomare, a doctoral student in the University of Northern Colorado's Social Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity program, is incorporating a social justice lens into her degree. She arrived at UNC determined to provide support for the LGBTQ+ community and has since broadened her scope to a variety of marginalized groups.

During her university search, a phone call with Professor Scott Douglas in the College of Natural and Health Sciences' Department of Kinesiology, Nutrition and Dietetics convinced Altomare her research would find support at UNC. Now, Douglas is her dissertation adviser.

"Growing up, I faced hate and discrimination simply for being myself. This personal experience inspired my master's thesis, a meta-analysis on LGBTQ+ safe spaces and inclusion, driven by my deep passion for supporting others like me," she said.

One way she's found to help others is by designing and teaching a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) course.

"The DEI course prepared undergraduate students in Sport and Exercise Science programs for their future work by learning about social justice advocacy, allyship, privilege and bias," Altomare said.

In her dissertation, "Integrating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Into an Undergraduate Sport and Exercise Science Program: A Holistic Case Study Utilizing Social Justice Education," she'll use multiple data sources to evaluate the course's development, implementation and impact. Some epiphanies occurred during the pilot class last spring. One student learned how to support their transgender and non-binary friends, and several others said they'd never before considered themselves as having privilege.

"Jenna wants to dig into this subject matter and change things for the better for athletes who are different. She's very curious and wants to do things right, so she takes feedback and incorporates it into her teaching and research. One strength is her willingness to learn. I'm her adviser, but she's actually the expert in transgender athletes in sport. I want to hear what she's thinking, and then we discuss it logically and how it might present in a research project or in her teaching. I give her tidbits, little nuggets from my own experience to help enhance what she's learning about how to teach," Douglas said.

He believes her work has the potential to help coaches overcome their biases and become more accepting of coaching everyone. He noted discussions about making the DEI class available for UNC students in other majors.

"My mantra is 'sport for all.' As an athlete with a disability, I had to break into that world from a different angle. Sport is growing, but we're excluding a lot of people. It's important that we change the world through the benefits of sport, and then hopefully it trickles positively to the rest of society, and we start to get more inclusive sport environments," Douglas said.

Besides her role as a student, Altomare has worked as a graduate instructor, graduate assistant for the Graduate School and office assistant at the Campus Recreation Center. She's certified in teaching, personal training and CPR. Additionally, she's on the U.S. Center for Coaching Excellence's DEI committee, serves on the Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE) board and is a member of the UNC Unified club, which is a Special Olympics Colorado affiliate.

She describes her work as "spreading seeds" and gave an example of how she made the happy discovery of one taking root. After explaining gender-neutral locker rooms and why they're essential in her first SHAPE conference presentation, she learned the following year that a prior attendee had convinced their school to provide them for students. In 2021 and 2023, SHAPE published her articles "LGBTQ+ Diversity and Representation in Health and Physical Activity" and "Transgender-Inclusive Physical Education." After graduating next year, Altomare aims to continue educating about these topics through speeches and written works.

She said one stunning statistic drives her passion: An LGBTQ+ youth with one safe adult in their life — someone they can trust, talk to or lean on — is 40% less likely to commit suicide.

"If I can help coaches and teachers learn how to support these individuals, hopefully, they could be that person for someone and that could save a life," Altomare said.