Aspen Karns
Xiphos Corps Dance Community

Since Fall 2022, I have been involved in Xiphos Corps. Xiphos Corps is a dance community that welcomes all people of all levels regardless of dance experience. We do not hold typical auditions and welcome all who want to join as long as they put in the work. With Xiphos, I have been a director for 2 years now and I love every minute of it. We have performed at IU Indianapolis events like Jagathon and Regatta, and have even performed outside of campus at events such as World of Dance Chicago, showcases at Purdue, and even won first place last year at Ball State's Outlet Dance Competition!
Ability Fitness Clinic Service Learning

In Spring of 2025 I took a class that gave me the task of personal training someone with a disability. I had never personal trained someone before, and my experience with working with those with disabilities was very little, so this was an exciting and new challenge for me. At first, I was very frustrated and discouraged as the plans I was writing wasn't being picked up by my client very well in the first few weeks. However, as I learned more, adopted a growth mindset, and changed my approach, the plans started being more beneficial for her and I learned alternative ways to train someone, correct their form, and modify exercise correctly.
Undergraduate Research
In Fall 2023 I had the opportunity to do undergraduate research under Dr. Keith Naugle. I was able to conduct research with the IU Indianapolis Women's Soccer Team. The team had Firstbeat, which were monitors strapped to their bodies at all times to measure things such as heart rate, oxygen consumption, recovery, and more statistics. For my part of the research, I focused on recovery in the athletes and emphasized with further research what this could mean to improve and optimize their recovery. I presented this research at the Physical Activity Wellness Institute at IU Indianapolis in December 2023.

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