Focusing on New Insights

By Kiana Chan

After a week of recruiting through flyers on Bruin Walk, social media, and eagerly reaching out to our fitness, sustainability, and health-minded friends, we finally rounded up a nice group of 10 participants for our focus group last Friday. Over a not-so-healthy meal of pizza and soda, our team gained some valuable insight about student’s perceptions of air quality and potential ways that we can improve the quality of student’s fitness experience at the John Wooden Recreation Center. During the focus group, our team asked questions such as, “what do you think of the air quality at Wooden? In LA?” “How do you define air quality?” “How has air quality affected you?” “Are there areas in Wooden that you feel are unsustainable?” and “If you could improve one thing about the gyms at UCLA, what would it be?” These questions prompted interesting comments and conversations among students, which will help guide our project and provide recommendations for future research. Overall, it seemed like air quality was not a topic of concern among students who exercised at either Wooden or Bruin Fit. This was great news because it points to the fact that the air quality in Wooden is not an issue both based on the data we

Overall, it seemed like air quality was not a topic of concern among students who exercised at either Wooden or Bruin Fit. This was great news because it points to the fact that the air quality in Wooden is not an issue both based on the data we collected and based on student’s personal experiences. Furthermore, our team learned that some of the dance teams use the gym during late hours of the night, which helped justify the recent implementation of 24-hours at Wooden.

This week, we spoke with Katie about arranging a meeting with the Assistant Manager at the UCLA Student Activities Center (SAC) with the possibility of collaborating with them to perform an audit of the cleaning products used in both SAC and Wooden. We want to ensure that UCLA facilities are using cleaning products are safe for human health and environmentally friendly. In the coming weeks, we will also be working on data analysis and graph production for the air quality data that we have collected from Wooden and B-Fit from last quarter and the first week of this quarter.