The average person sits for several hours each day. College students are no exception — they spend multiple hours at their desks in class and doing homework.
This sedentary lifestyle has a number of risks, including heart disease, decreased focus and back problems.
Elizabeth Bailey, lecturer in health and human performance, placed a standing desk in three classrooms in the Koury Athletic Center thanks to a grant from the School of Education.
“[Students] should be allowed the option to stand when they have the opportunity to stand,” Bailey said. “Standing in class seems like a good time to do it for me because you can do the same things sitting.”
Sitting negates exercising progress for those who work out an hour a day, according to Bailey.
But the shift from sitting to standing stimulates the brain, genetic material and the uptake of fat.
“If you think about it, an hour of exercise is only a small percentage of your day,” Bailey said. “Balanced by 12 hours of sitting or sedentary activity, it doesn’t do you any good. Standing at least causes contraction of muscles.”
Bailey had the desks installed in her classrooms after Spring Break but didn’t promote it because her “Inactivity: A Threat to a Modern Lifestyle” class was conducting research, which led to a lack of use.
“I was getting frustrated because no one was using it,” Bailey said. “So one day in the classroom, I put a note and put in on the desk and I was like, ‘OK everybody, there’s a desk back there if you want to stand.’”
Since having students try out the desks, there have been mixed reviews. Some students feel awkward being the only person standing in a classroom and fear being called on more. Others don’t want to kick someone out of their “designated seat” to use the standing desk.
Meanwhile, some students have a competition to get to class early to use the desk.
Bailey said she would like to have more standing desks to get beyond some of her students’ reservations. But she needs more funding and the space for them.
Standing desks are larger, so they take up more space and need to be placed in the back of the classrooms so they don’t obstruct anyone. Bailey tried to get the desks placed in other buildings, but they didn’t work well with the layouts of certain classrooms.
She hopes other classrooms will want standing desks after seeing increased demand in the Koury Athletic Center.
To encourage more students to try it, Bailey created a poster to go up in each room explaining the benefits of standing. Some of these benefits include better concentration, improved fat metabolism and disease prevention.
A February article in Student Health 101, an online health magazine sponsored by the university, listed benefits as well.
“[Standing desks] should appeal to anyone,” Bailey said. “If it’s true that people here value physical activity, then they need to know the dangers of sitting so much.”