04/30/2026
Xiaoping “Ping” Fan, an assistant professor in SUNY Cortland’s Physical Education Department, is among a select few faculty members recognized by SUNY recently for achieving significant scholarship early in her career.
Fan is among only a handful of faculty members across the university system to be chosen for the 2025-26 Chancellor’s Horizon Award for Faculty Research and Scholarship.
Only 10 winners across the 64-campus SUNY system are selected for the honor, which is open to early career faculty from all disciplines. It’s the second year the recognition has been offered.
“Throughout the SUNY system, our faculty are conducting extraordinary research and scholarship that is having a remarkable impact across all fields of study,” said SUNY Chancellor King.
“Our Horizon awardees have positioned themselves as leaders in their disciplines early in their careers, while also demonstrating the depth of SUNY’s excellence and expertise. I applaud this year’s awardees for their hard work and look forward to seeing how they continue to lead innovation and scholarship in their fields.”
Fan’s scholarship focuses on physical education teacher education (PETE), including the promotion of community-based physical activity for children, teacher preparation, school-based physical activity promotion and quality physical education.
Less than five years after receiving her doctorate in sport pedagogy at University of Northern Colorado, she has had a substantial impact on her field, including authorship of multiple peer-reviewed articles in the discipline’s top-tier journals and numerous presentations at professional conferences.
Fan joined SUNY Cortland in 2022. She has served as an associate editor, journal reviewer and as the president of higher education at the New York State Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.
“Dr. Fan’s research is innovative due to its highly synergistic nature,” a nominator wrote. “She relentlessly connects her scholarship with practice through community partnerships.”
Currently, Fan leads a collaboration with the Cortland YWCA examining the impact of social-emotional learning-infused after-school programs on children’s physical activity and social skills.
“Such initiatives represent applied scholarship at its finest, advancing knowledge while producing tangible benefits for schools, communities and future teachers,” the nominator wrote.
“Her integrated approach — linking teacher preparation with community health outcomes — addresses a critical gap in how our field conceptualizes the relationship between professional practice and public health,” wrote another nominator, Jennifer Walton-Fisette, professor and interim associate dean in Kent State University’s College of Education, Health and Human Services.
“As schools and communities increasingly recognize the importance of physical activity for children’s holistic development, Dr. Fan’s scholarship provides the evidence base for designing effective interventions and preparing educators to lead them.”
Since 2024, Fan has received the “trifecta” of major awards from the field’s most respected organizations, Walton-Fisette noted.
That includes the 2026 Hally Beth Poindexter Young Scholar Award from the National Association for Kinesiology in Higher Education — the premier recognition for emerging scholars in kinesiology— the 2025 Thomas L. McKenzie Research Award from the Society of Health and Physical Educators (known as SHAPE America), and the 2024 Early Career Scholar Award from AIESEP, an international organization of scholars in the field of physical education and sport to share knowledge and engage in quality research.
Fan previously served as a visiting assistant professor at Texas A&M International University, and before that as a research assistant in the Active Schools Institute at University of Northern Colorado.
She also has an M.A. in physical education pedagogy from California State University, Chico, and a B.Ed. in physical education from Central China Normal University.
The Chancellor’s Horizon Award for Faculty Research and Scholarship honors early career faculty whose scholarly or creative activities have already achieved significant recognition and, crucially, hold strong promise for field-defining impact in the future.
The second class of Horizon Award winners were nominated in the 2025-26 academic year via a campus-level process that allows each SUNY campus to nominate only one faculty member. Candidates’ nomination portfolios were reviewed by SUNY's Distinguished Academy faculty who made recommendations to the SUNY Provost.