Yet that may have less to do with lively gym programs than with lack of adult supervision, experts said. A decline in school nurses and larger class sizes could be to blame, said the study’s senior author Lara McKenzie of Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

“Children got hurt by running into equipment or having contact with structures or other persons,” McKenzie said. “They had heat stroke, fainting and heart palpitations.” Boys had more cuts and broken bones than girls. Girls were more likely to suffer strains and sprains.
While the benefits of physical education classes outweigh the risks, McKenzie said, “being healthy doesn’t have to hurt.”

The study, based on hospital reports of phys ed injuries, was released Monday and appears in the September edition of Pediatrics. It suggests schools should renew their efforts to make gym class safer, said Cheryl Richardson of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education in Reston, Va.

Not all P.E. teachers are certified
Richardson noted some school districts don’t require teachers to be certified to teach phys ed, particularly at the elementary school level.

“Classroom teachers who aren’t trained in P.E. might not recognize situations that can cause injury,” Richardson said. Certified physical education teachers know where to position themselves, the amount of space children need around them for activities and proper warmup exercises.

The federal Healthy People 2010 initiative has made it a goal to improve P.E. programs. That’s led to more state policies supporting physical education, but not all schools comply because the policies aren’t usually accompanied by funding to support them, Richardson said.

For the study, researchers analyzed emergency room reports of P.E.-related injuries in children, ages 5 to 18. The data came from 100 representative U.S. hospitals taking part in surveillance for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

60,000 injuries in 2007
The researchers found nearly 12,000 injuries from those hospitals during the 11 years. From that, they calculated a national estimate of nearly 37,000 annual injuries on average, with fewer than 30,000 in 1997 and climbing to more than 60,000 injuries a year by 2007.

Rates per 10,000 students in those age groups also increased. The researchers weren’t able to calculate a rate based on numbers of children taking gym classes, which would have given a more accurate picture. Based on other studies, the researchers believe there’s been only a slight increase in P.E. participation and only in the past few years.

The authors said it’s the first examination of P.E.-related injuries in a large nationally representative sample.

“Physical education in schools is one of our main tools to increase physical activity and prevent childhood obesity,” McKenzie said.

Adapted from MSNBC

“I hadn’t kept up with the university at all,” said Ms. Haimes, of Montclair, N.J. “It was so long ago.”

Until this spring, when Ms. Haimes’s department was relocated to Columbus, Ohio, and she found herself unemployed.

In the new world order of job searches, networking is everything, so she gamely dusted off her 33-year-old Syracuse affiliation. Armed with her business card and her 60-second “I’m in transition” speech, she went recently to a cocktail party for alumni. There, another Orangewoman gave her a tip: the university’s career center is not just for undergraduates but for older alumni, too.

Syracuse counselors have since critiqued Ms. Haimes’s résumé, helped tweak her job search and offered to connect her with graduates in related fields. “It’s all free,” said Ms. Haimes, in wonderment. “No one’s asked for a donation. But if I get a job, I’ll give them a large one.”

For the unemployed, the standing advice about how to find work involves doggedly attending job fairs and reaching out to everyone in your e-mail address book. But increasingly, a lesser-known avenue with the potential to be effective, thanks to the emotional bonds formed during undergraduate years, turns out to be the alma mater.

In the last year, as the recession and a 9.5 percent unemployment rate have slowed the economy, schools have been amending their pitches to older graduates. Typically, undergraduate institutions offer standard-fare golf tournaments and wine-tasting reunions — hoping to tap nostalgia and shake loose donations. Now, they are providing an expanding array of career services, including panels of alumni experts, professional affinity networks, personal coaching and job listings, support that is becoming a fixture of business and law programs. Old school ties, they suggest, can have new currency, even urgency.

Magnanimous, yes; selfless, no. Career guidance for older alumni can benefit schools as well. It freshens loyalties that may have been mothballed for decades.

“If we’re understanding toward alumni, they’ll be grateful and invest in their alma mater,” said Laura Denbow, executive director of Bucknell’s alumni relations and career services office. “Alumni support is not only financial in nature. It’s providing access to their organizations and their expertise. Sometimes, that can be more valuable.”

The programs may come through an alumni office, a career center or a service linking both. In September, Bucknell sent an e-mail message to 47 alumni at the collapsing Lehman Brothers, offering the support of the school’s career counseling services, a network of 600 alumni in financial professions and a job database. In April, Middlebury College assembled an evening panel in downtown Manhattan — “Career Advice for Tough Times on Wall Street” — featuring graduates at Goldman Sachs and the Blackstone Group, as well as a career services representative from the college.

IN May, Notre Dame started face-to-face events and a coordinated Web site for undergraduate and graduate-school alumni, with links to professional networks, a career counseling hot line, job listings and a vast alumni database. Throughout the year, Lehigh presented job-skills Web seminars, usually at a lunchtime hour. The New York City alumni association of Howard University is planning career transition seminars. Northwestern is designing panels on midcareer advice and recession-era lifestyle adjustments this year.

In a world upended by deep recession, these programs are examples of what goes around, comes around. When Ellen Barresi, Notre Dame ’93, was a division chief financial officer in New York City, she would post openings for her own teams on Notre Dame job boards. Recently unemployed, she now peruses those same listings. When she lands interviews at corporations, she checks for alumni who may work there.

“If you find someone who can tell you something about the company, that can give you an edge,” she said. “And that can be through school ties.”

Not that donations, as a byproduct of such efforts, would be frowned upon. For 18 years, David Monson, Lehigh ’90, had worked for a national car rental agency, rising to regional sales director. In February, he lost his job when his company downsized. He had not been an especially generous alumnus. But scrambling for connections, Mr. Monson, a father of two young children, called his alma mater. He was stunned. “They said, right from the get-go, ‘We’d love to help you out,’ ” he said.

The notion of helping out older alumni is spreading. In June, Lori Kennedy, whose wonderfully euphemistic title at Lehigh is “director of alumni career solutions,” gave a Web seminar for 40 schools about setting up such programs. In 2002, following the employment downturn after the 9/11 attacks and the dot-com bust, Lehigh realized that its career counselors, trained to help new graduates, couldn’t meet the needs of midcareer professionals. It created an extensive online and personalized career service for all graduates. “Last year we served 2,000 alumni,” Ms. Kennedy said. “This year it was 4,000.”

Working with older alumni requires understanding their particular psychological challenges. Worried about their children and legacy issues, these graduates have “the sort of burdens and responsibilities that an 18-year-old may not think of,” said Ms. Denbow of Bucknell. “They worked so hard to get where they are and when that organization fails them, they have a lot of anger. They’re asking, ‘Do I want to go on in that rat race?’ ”

Web seminars, or Webinars, have become increasingly popular with older alumni, not least because they can provide polite, anonymous cover for those who may feel abashed about seeking help through an institution that was a hallmark of their distant youth.

And so thousands of alumni, their undergraduate years a dim memory, are dialing in for refresher courses. Advanced-level Résumé Writing. Informational Interviews. And that required course for the middle-aged: Navigating Social Networking Sites.

In one such Webinar, a tidbit of old-school relief came to Kitty Boynton, Cornell ’76. For 18 years, she had worked as a career counselor in the police department in Orlando, Fla. Two years ago, she quit to become a life coach for private clients. The economy sucker-punched that dream. Last month, she attended a Webinar on networking techniques, joined by Cornellians whose graduating years ranged from 1964 to 2010.

“I’m a troglodyte when it comes to technology,” Ms. Boynton said. “I assumed that after making contact with someone, I’d be expected to communicate through e-mail or a social media. But the instructor said that an e-mail is when you care enough to send the very least. A good old-fashioned handwritten thank-you note is still the best. O.K.! I thought I’d have to learn to Twitter or something.”

ON occasion, the alma mater inadvertently offers a sip at the fountain of youth. Chuck Megivern graduated from Lehigh as an electrical engineer with a pocket protector and slide rule in 1974, when rowdier graduates were listening to the Doobie Brothers and Kiss. He spent his entire career at a Fortune 500 technology company, eventually at its plant in Burlington, Vt. Two years ago, Mr. Megivern began worrying about layoffs — just about the time his youngest child was accepted to Lehigh.

On the school’s Web site, he spotted the alumni career services program. Methodically, he worked his way through the online seminars. Over the phone, Ms. Kennedy gave him additional counseling. Last fall, a Burlington start-up, Dealer.com, was seeking a software developer. He opened Ms. Kennedy’s handout. “Page 30,” Mr. Megivern said. “ ‘Interview Skills.’  ”

Then, salary negotiations. “I kept making emergency calls to Lori,” Mr. Megivern said. “She would say, ‘Consider this factor, consider that one.’ ”

He started the new job in March. In a sense, he has come full circle, living something of the free-spirited life envisioned by many of his generation. The company has bean bag chairs in the conference room, a gym and a cafeteria with organic food. He bikes to work.

In June, 35 years after graduating from Lehigh, Mr. Megivern attended his first college reunion there. “I gave Lehigh a little money, too,” he said. “Not enough to name a building after me.”

But, Mr. Megivern noted, “They are getting a much larger amount as well — my daughter’s tuition.”

By JAN HOFFMAN

Adapted from NYTimes.com