Staff Directory
Stark Center Director and IGH Co-editor
Terry Todd, Ph.D. began at the University of Texas on a full athletic scholarship in tennis. He
lettered and played in the national intercollegiate championships, but also began lifting weights, and as an
undergraduate won intercollegiate championships in weightlifting in the
super-heavyweight class. He continued lifting during graduate school and over
the next several years won national championships in both weightlifting and
powerlifting, setting national and "world-best" records in the
process. After a year and a half as managing editor of Strength
& Health magazine, the leading journal in the field at that time, Terry
began his teaching career as a faculty member at Auburn University. He later taught at Mercer University in
Terry has published five books __ Inside Powerlifting (Contemporary Books, 1978); Fitness for Athletes (Contemporary Books, 1978); Herschel Walker's Basic Training (Doubleday, 1985 & 1989); and with Jan Todd, Lift Your Way to Youthful Fitness: The Comprehensive Guide to Weight Training (Little, Brown and Company, 1985). He has also published more than 500 articles in both popular and academic publications, including Sports Illustrated, Readers' Digest, the Journal of Sport History, Men's Journal, Iron Man, Muscle & Fitness, Texas Monthly, and the National Strength and Conditioning Association Journal. He lectures often around the nation on the subjects of drugs in sports, conditioning, and sport/fitness history. For the past seven years, Todd has directed the Arnold Strongman Classic a strength contest designed to pit weightlifters, powerlifters, and professional strongman competitors against each other in events that test basic strength.
Terry served as CBS' commentator on sports medicine and drugs in the year prior to, and during, both the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympic Games. He has also worked as a color commentator on sports for CBS, NBC, ESPN, and the BBC and has appeared many times on such shows as the “McNeil/Lehrer News Hour,” the “Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” “Nightline,” “ABC Nightly News,” “CBS Evening News,” “NBC Nightly News,” “CNN News,” and CNN's “Newsmakers.” He has consulted for many television programs, including “60 Minutes.” He also provided commentaries on sports medicine and history for National Public Radio's Morning Edition for many years.
In 1979 Terry was inducted into the United States Powerlifting Federation's (USPF) Hall of Fame. In 1992 he was honored by the Association of Oldetime Barbell and Strongmen. Todd was selected as an inaugural member into the USA Powerlifting Association's Women's Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2005 he was inducted into the Strength Coaching Hall of Fame. In 2008 Todd received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oscar Heidenstam Foundation.
Stark Center Co-Director and IGH Co-editor
Jan Todd , Ph.D., the Roy J. McLean Fellow in Sport History__is both a sport historian and a
well-known expert on strength training. A Professor in the
Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at The University of Texas at Austin, Jan teaches courses in sport and exercise
history, sport philosophy, and sport ethics and also serves as the
department’s Undergraduate Advisor. For
many years she also supervised the weight training and conditioning classes
taught by the department. She has
written two books: Physical Culture and the Body Beautiful:
Purposive Exercise in the Lives of American Women (Mercer University Press,
1998) and, with her husband, Terry Todd, Lift Your Way to Youthful Fitness (Little-Brown, 1985), the first popular book to argue that weight training could be used to offset
the aging process.
Jan was also a contributor to the National Strength and Conditioning Association's (NSCA) "Position Paper on Strength Training for Female Athletes" (1989) and received the NSCA's Presidents Award in 1990 for her work on that publication. In addition, Todd has written more than one hundred articles in popular and scholarly journals on various aspects of strength training and exercise. She also lectures frequently. In 2008 Todd delivered the Seward Staley Address at the North American Society for Sport History; in 2000 she was the keynote speaker at the New England ACSM symposium on strength training; in 1999 she delivered the keynote address at the ACSM's Fitness Summit in New Orleans; and in 1998 she was the D. B. Dill Historical Lecturer for the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) at their annual meeting in Orlando.
Todd's interest in the academic study of strength and exercise grew from her personal involvement in the sport of powerlifting. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Todd was considered by both Sports Illustrated and the Guinness Book of Records to be the "strongest woman in the world." In 1982 she became the first woman inducted into the International Powerlifting Hall of Fame. In 1992 Todd received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association of Oldetime Barbell and Strongmen. Todd set world records in five bodyweight classes during her 12-year powerlifting career; her personal bests were 545 pounds in the squat and 1230 pounds in the partial deadlift. Todd was inducted into USA Powerlifting's Women's Hall of Fame in 2004, the Texas Powerlifting Hall of fame in 2005, and in 2008 she was honored by the Oscar Heidenstam Foundation in England for her contributions to the field of physical culture. Todd was also recently (2009) inducted into the National Fitness Hall of Fame.
IGH Associate Editor and Business/Subscriptions Manager
Kim Beckwith, Ph.D. is a lecturer and the Coordinator of Strength and Conditioning in the Kinesiology Department. Kim met Jan and Terry Todd when she enrolled in a weight training class at UT as an undergraduate. With their encouragement, she joined the Longhorn Powerlifting Team and became one of the premier drug-free, collegiate lifters in the country. She set many American and national collegiate records in two different weight classes, won three national titles, and earned recognition as the strongest collegiate female, pound-for-pound, in the American Drug Free Powerlifting Association for three straight years.
Kim became interested in studying the history of physical culture and exercise while taking classes to earn her master's degree in Sports Administration. She began volunteering her time to Iron Game History as the business/subscriptions manager and offered to help in cataloguing the Collection. Exposure and access to so much unique physical culture history piqued her interest and eventually caused her to obtain her doctoral degree in sport history. Her dissertation examined the life and impact of one of the pioneers of American weight training: "Building Strength: Alan Calvert, the Milo Bar-bell Company, and the Modernization of American Weight Training."
Before returning to graduate school, Kim was a faculty member at Austin Community College, teaching there from 1991 to 2000. Since 1995 she has served as the coach of the Longhorn Powerlifting Team and has directed the USAPL Longhorn Open Powerlifting Championships each fall. She is also currently serving as the USAPL Texas State Chair.
Assistant Director for Library Services
Cindy Slater comes to The Stark Center from the U.S. Olympic Committee, where she was the Manager of Library & Archives for over 20 years.
As one of the few “sports librarians” in the country, Cindy has extensive experience with the sport science and medicine literature, as well as Olympic-related documentation and organizations. She will be working to catalog the 30,000+ volumes in The Center’s library collection. She is looking forward to assisting researchers and UT students with their physical culture-related research.
Office Manager and Volunteer Coordinator
Stacy Metzler became the Office Manager and Volunteer Coordinator of the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center in June of 2009. She graduated from Texas A&M University in May of 2009 with a degree in Construction Science and a minor in Business. Stacy is in charge of scheduling students and volunteers that work with the Stark Center collections. She also helps with the everyday operations at the Stark Center. Stacy likes to spend her spare time outdoors, taking road trips, or being around her great family and friends.
Archivist
Geoff Schmalzgraduated from Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota with a Bachelor’s of Arts in History in 1998. He then worked in a variety of capacities for Barnes and Noble Booksellers in both Minnesota and Texas from 2000 to 2007. He entered the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 2006, graduating with a Masters of Science in Information Studies in May of 2008. He focused his studies on Archival Enterprise.
Geoff joined the Stark Center staff in September of 2009 and is currently processing the papers of Abbye “Pudgy” Stockton, a central figure in the history of fitness in the United States and one of the first women to become known for participating in weight training. Pudgy and her husband Les became famous for their association with the original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica and following her death her daughter, Laura Stockton, donated her mother’s papers to The Stark Center. As an archivist, Geoff is not only organizing the Stockton Collection but writing finding aids that will enable researchers to quickly navigate through her collection. He is delighted to aid the Stark Center in its mission to of educating the public about the history of sports, weight training, bodybuilding, and fitness. Geoff loves sports, especially UT Austin sports, and claims to be thrilled to have an office in DKR Texas Memorial Stadium.
Graduate Research Assistant / Creative Consultant
Matt Bowers is a PhD student in the sport management program at the University of Texas at Austin, where his research focuses on youth sport development and the sociocultural antecedents and consequences of sport policy. He joined the Stark Center team in 2008 as the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center/NSCA Graduate Research Fellow. His first year was dedicated to compiling a comprehensive history of the evolution of strength training and conditioning for the development of elite athletes, a web-based project/museum exhibit funded through a partnership with the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Following this appointment, Matt has remained on staff with the Stark Center as a research assistant and creative consultant responsible for generating museum content. He lives in Austin with his wife, Lauren, and their two dogs.
Graduate Research Assistant and NSCA Team Leader
Peter Ullman began his college career at the University of Texas where he was a four-year letterman for the UT football team and earned an undergraduate degree in Kinesiology. He is now working on a Master’s degree in Kinesiology and plans to coach high school football upon graduation. At the Stark Center, Peter is directing the video and website project related to The History of strength and conditioning for sports. He was born and raised in Austin by his parents Bill and Catherine, and his sister, Audrey is a member of the University of Texas rowing team.
Teaching Assistant
Scott Jedlicka is a Master's student in Sport Management at the University of Texas, and is currently a teaching assistant for Dr. Thomas Hunt. He joined the Stark Center team in 2008 as a teaching assistant for Dr. Jan Todd and Dr. Kim Beckwith. In addition to his TA duties, Scott was part of the extensive effort to package, inventory and move many of the Stark Center materials, and he continues to lend a hand at the Center wherever and whenever he can. He is currently working on the planning for several special events to be held at The Stark Center.
Webmaster
Andy Miller, an undergraduate student studying computer science at the University of Texas, has been working to keep the website up to date at The Stark Center. He is also working with Peter Ullman, Matt Bowers, and The Stark Center staff on the NSCA web project on the history of weight training in athletics. That web project should be live within the next few months. Andy is a member of the UT Mens Wrestling team, the honors computer science program, and a few too many intramural sports teams. Andy was born in Oberlin, Ohio and came to Texas in 2008.
