(600+ participants)
HRS is a longitudinal study that was established in the 90's and throughout my time on the study I took on several different roles. I recruited participants, coordinated a team of field researchers (up to 15), monitored study progress, tracked time allocations, improved efficiency, collected physical measures, administered surveys, assigned duties to teams, managed team resources, and more.
As a team leader on such a large scale study, I learned how to delegate and manage large quantities of data and how to rely on my team to accomplish their goals. Each wave of data collection presented new challenges of training staff, adding additional cohorts, or mitigating concerns of study changes to existing participants. Through appropriate delegation of tasks and trusting my team, we consistently met or exceeded our production goals.
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Collected data, monitored study progress, recruited participants, and coordinated participant activities.
Working on this study opened my eyes to the differing communication methods of participants which should be considered when creating contact protocols. Namely, young adult student athletes seemed to prefer text messaging versus phone calls and once we implemented contact procedures adding more text messaging our completion rate doubled.
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Collected data, monitored study progress, recruited participants, coordinated participant activities, and assisted in post project reviews.
Coordinating visits for MRI and PET scans at local hospitals proved challenging due to their fluctuating increase in demand. We were able to inform our participants, but found the 4 hr time commitment plus variable scheduling lead to lower participation rates. Due to the low intake rate of the collaborative hospitals, we had to adjust our production rate and slow down with recruitment to allow smaller gaps between recruitment and study completion.
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Coordinated a small team of field researchers, monitored progress, improved efficiencies in administrative tasks, collected data when needed, managed team resources, and mitigated participant concerns.
This project taught me the importance of respecting participant time constraints. Working with new mothers busy adapting to their child made contacting some individuals extremely difficult. We found ways around that issue by closely monitoring contact windows and adding alternative methods of contact which increased our completion rate by nearly 20%
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TITLE: A practical comparison of traditional and non-linear periodized weight training
By managing a team of 8 student workers, I took this 10 week training study of 32 D-I athletes from initial concept all the way through to publishing into international journals. This required all the project management steps to be successful. Monitoring progress and reporting to the coaches made this a unique experience preparing me to work on other complex projects.
This process taught me the importance of organized record keeping. While thinking I was organized at the time, I realized that I was only keeping the current information readily available and when I attempted to look back into older records I had to waste time searching for what I needed. After this experience I made it a point to better organize my digital record keeping.
At East Tennessee State University in the Center of Excellence in Sport Science & Coach Education, I coordinated all the events surrounding athlete testing and research. In relation to these activities, I had to become the expert on all the laboratory equipment and was responsible for upkeep. Additionally, I presented results to coaches and interpreted them for their understanding.
Time management and efficiency were a crucial part of coordinating athlete testing. With multiple teams trying to schedule testing and only having a limited time to test, we needed to decrease their time spent in the facilities to allow more time in other areas for their sport. I periodically monitored complete run through times of individual athletes and found several processes that were bottle-necking the flow. I then took it upon myself to improve the software used for analysis to be more efficient and allow for real-time feedback directly to the athletes. This action decreased the overall time to completion by 50%.
This was a small business project I undertook to help improve area high school strength & conditioning practices and local firefighter health & wellness in Missouri. Though I ended the business when I moved to Tennessee, it provided an avenue to learn the processes behind the scenes of growing a business.
Working with local firefighters gave me insight into the differing demands of that career and how important it is to engage in active listening. By asking the right questions they gave me information that allowed for a more personalized approach to the entire program which drastically increased enthusiasm for the program.
I was the initial manager of a team to implement a new database management program for all athlete monitoring data collected in the Sport Science Laboratory. This database will not only improve storage efficiency, but make feedback to coaches and athletes nearly instantaneous!
TITLE: Longitudinal variations in jumping asymmetry
This project involved analyzing data already collected through the athlete monitoring program at East Tennessee State University. Working with over 1200 jumps, I found ways to automate the analysis and storage of the data to stay uniformed in my approach. While I have completed this dissertation, the publication of the research in peer reviewed articles is pending as of 10/30/2021.