Professor Dr. Stephan Wassong, Director of the Olympic Studies Centre Cologne (OSC) and Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Johannesburg, has been appointed for the third time to the IOC Olympic Education Commission.
The Commission advises the IOC on the promotion of Olympic education and provides strategic direction on IOC programmes and activities related to the education of youth through sport.
Professor Wassong has been a member of the IOC Olympic Education since 2015. The appointments to the IOC commissions are renewed every year as IOC President Thomas Bach discusses the commission´s compositions with their respective chair persons. In the case of the IOC Olympic Education Commission, the chair is IOC member Barry Maister (New Zealand).
Under the leadership of Professor Wassong, the OSC Cologne is running various Olympic Education projects that fit within the scope of the IOC Olympic Education Commission. This accounts in particular for the institutional cooperation between UJ and the OSC Cologne that mirrors the educational significance of the Olympic Movement and is highly valued within the international sports community.
The cooperation, which runs since 2014, aims for the establishment and development of an Olympic Studies Centre at UJ. This Centre is the first one in Africa and adopts a pioneering role in the distribution of the Olympic values and Olympic education.
Amongst the main initiatives of the collaboration were the conduction of an Olympic Education workshop in Johannesburg in May 2015, the organization of an international Conference on Historical and Contemporary Issues in Olympic Studies and the publication of an edited collection with the same title in 2016. In autumn 2017, a special issue on Olympic Studies will be published in the internationally recognized journal South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education and Recreation. The two partner institutions are currently in talks about an extension of the agreement with further Olympic education projects in the planning.
