Health and Human Science Matters
CSU College of Health and Human Sciences 2024 Dean's Fellows | Promoting wellness through Ph.D. research
(upbeat music) - Welcome to Health and Human Science Matters, a podcast by Colorado State University's College of Health and Human Sciences. I'm Avery Martin, co-host and Assistant Director of Communications. - And I'm Matt Hickey, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies. In our college, we make it our mission to optimize human health and wellbeing through discovery and innovation. Don't just take our word for it. Each episode, we sit down with people who fulfill that mission, our college faculty and staff. Today, we've got a special treat 'cause we have three guests with us instead of one. So this is our 20, 24 Dean's Fellows. And so I'm gonna introduce you in alphabetical order, but then we're gonna sort of let our hair down and get kinda wild in terms of just having a conversation. So Ross Atkinson, PhD student in the School of Education. - Yes. - Welcome. - Thank you. - We're glad to have you, Megan Moran, PhD student in Human Development and Family Studies. - Yeah, glad to be here. - We're glad to have you and Dr. Maureen Walsh, who recently defended her dissertation, a doctoral student in Health and Exercise Science. - Thanks for having me. - Yeah, yeah. - We'll put a pause in and post in that. - That's the goal, right? It seems so far away when you start a PhD program, it's the-- - It's still so distant. - Yeah, so I have promises and aspirations, but we're glad to have all of you here. So in the spirit of alphabetical order, I'm gonna start with you and-- - Sounds good. - And you think about big questions, big problems that you're pursuing as a doctoral student. Tell us a bit about what that looks like for you. - Yeah, so I started looking at veterinary integration issues back when I was a master student in the English department. - Heat beer? - Yeah, here in CSU, any heady. And I started a veterans writing workshop with some faculty there back in 2018. And we were looking at, you know, does this, how can we support veterans who are reintegrating into our community? We have a large veteran population, military veteran population here in Northern Colorado, about 25,000 vets. And for such a small area, that's quite a density, so. And CSU as an institution has a lot of veterans in it as well. And so we started this program and we'd run it for the last five years. And so my research is looking at, does this program actually support veteran wellbeing and how to put it simply? But I think the big problem that it's really addressing is the issue with veteran transition and reintegration in general, coming from the federal transition assistance programs. US Army and actually all the military branches have, which are very check the boxes, what research shows, they kind of just kind of kick out the door. And if you think about the process of going into the military, it is a very elongated process, sometimes years, depending on your job. And the whole time you're being acculturated into that. And so you're going through really intense training. You're learning how to walk again in many senses. And then, so if you think about a lot of the people that go into the service are coming right out of high school and they're without really forming an adult identity or jumping right in the service, you've been broken down and built back up. We don't do that when we're kicking people out of the service or when they're getting out of the service. We just say, good luck, the VA is gonna support you. Here are some things on the PowerPoint that might help you out, like your home loan and your VA benefits for your GI bill. And good luck, you know, if you get out. But really, it should be more of a process of reintegration. One of the things we see and what this program is about is that it essentially veterans seek out these different community supports in order to get themselves reintegrated a little bit easier in the workshops of one of those. And so we wanna make sure that it's actually doing what we think it's doing and supporting the well-being of the time. - If I can, I wanna ask about where that interest and veteran wellness comes from. - Yeah, so I'm a U.S. Army vet myself. And so I had a lot of issues initially reintegrating for myself and I didn't really realize it. And writing was a thing that helped me get through. I was going to be in going to school with my undergrad to be an English teacher and secondary ed. Teach high school English. And I was in a poetry class and I was actually a general creative writing class, but a teacher was a poetry teacher. And she asked us to write a memoir. And I wrote this, the experience of me flying into Afghanistan on the plane. And they do this military dive where, because you have to go real high when you're flying over enemy territory. But then right when you wanna land, you got drop, you know. And so, it can't get you right up in the air. And so, you're sitting on the, we're sitting in like cargo nets and we're flying in, you know, coming straight down. And one of my friends threw up and knew his shirt. And we had like, you know, four or five hours of the load and gear after we land and all that. So he's just in his, you know, in his staff or four. And so I wrote this memoir and the class really liked it. And I realized that like people are interested in these stories and that writing it, the act of writing it helped me process what was a very scary moment. But we turned it into something a little bit, you know, funny for other people while also highlighting the intensity of it. And I think that it made me realize that process of getting it out there and not only writing it, but then publishing it and sharing it, supported me, it helped me. And so, when I had the opportunity to start a writing workshop here at CSU with some faculty, I was very, I jumped on it really quickly. - We ask so much of our military veterans. We can do better, so thank you. - Yeah, thank you for your support. - Yeah, thank you. - So Megan, tell us again, big problems, big questions that you're pursuing as a doc student. - Yeah, so I guess at the broadest level, I'm focused on helping adolescents with their mental health. So we know that mental health in that age group and it is a developmentally sensitive age or time period. And we know that teens are really struggling. We know that COVID kind of exacerbated these existing sort of negative trends that we are seeing in mental health. So it's really a prime time to intervene and particularly sort of prevention efforts are really important. And there's some really good research to suggest that when teenagers are trained in mindfulness, and that means paying attention to the present moment with an attitude of kindness, that it can help them with their stress, navigate just the ups and downs of being a teen, being a person, and so there's good reason to believe that that can help them. But the research isn't as robust or as straightforward. The results aren't as clear as we might hope. And so my research is really focused on kind of drilling down and looking at what are the processes that are happening while teens are engaging in this training and being mindful. So like how and why is this working? And in particular, I'm really focused on this process of engagement. And we probably all kind of know what that means intuitively. Like it's sort of being productively involved in whatever you're doing. But those processes haven't been looked at in this context. So I'm really interested in looking to see, does it matter if teens are really engaged in that training process? And what does that look like? What are some of the barriers with the ultimate goal of optimizing these training programs for this really sensitive age group and vulnerable age group? - Wow. Again, the breadth in this college continues to just tickle me. I think it's great to see and see the range of what happens. So same question. How did you get interested in these questions in this population? - Yeah, well, I spent, I had a long and winding road to get here. And part of that path involved working in youth development. So working directly with, you know, young people with teenagers. And I saw the different challenges that they were facing in terms of their socio-emotional development, their mental health, and a lot of the influences on that. And particularly I was working in communities that a lot of our evidence-based programs aren't designed for. So these were like rural communities. And so I got really interested in sort of these more implementation science questions. And so that's really what brought me to this particular research question. But I mean, I'm sure everyone here in this room knows a teenager or was a teenager who struggled with mental health issues. So from a personal perspective, I just feel like teens are often misunderstood and I tell people like that I work or I'm interested in adolescents. A lot of times I get a funny look, but I think that they have, they're just such a cool age. They're really on the cusp of, I mean, and even speaking to what you were saying, you know, and that's a very specific population, but you know, you're a teen. You can go off and go to war or you, you know, are, you know, just spending time with your friends and going to college. And so I think it's just an age that has a lot of potential, but also needs support, so. - Absolutely. I think it's amazing. I'm a paraprofessional right now at a local high school. So I work with a very unique population of students that I love to work with. But I think that some of the things that we see, you know, is an inability to, you know, be in the present moment, a lot of times a lot of disassociation when it comes to engagement, when it comes to work with that population I work with. And so it's so cool to see what you work with. - And enormously important again, thank you. Maureen and I go way back. We've been buddies for a long time. So I'm particularly pleased to welcome Maureen and ask you again to tell us about big questions, big problems that you pursued. Now I can say in the past tense as a PhD student. - Yeah, so kind of the opposite spectrum of lifespan. Largely my research looks at the aging population. If you're not familiar, I know we've had some people on this podcast. I know we've had some people on this podcast that study aging, but the human lifespan or the number of years we've spent alive has increased, which is great. We want to celebrate that. We want to celebrate having people aging longer, living longer, but rather than when people do die, they normally pass away from chronic age-related chronic diseases rather than dying of things that could be were prevented by vaccine or sanitary conditions. And so my research looks at studying human health span or the number of years we are free from an age-related chronic disease or imagining an older adult who's 100 years old who is still playing pickleball with their friends and really maximizing their quality of life at older age and having more older adults to plant wisdom on younger generations. And so really trying to target how do we extend that human health span through targeting cellular drivers of aging. So while I'm in the Health and Exercise Science Department, majority of my doctoral work occurred in a wet lab looking at mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. And so looking at the cellular changes to hopefully impact function. - And again, tell us about this interest both in mitochondria, which I always love to hear about in healthy aging. Where did that come from? - Yeah, so my undergrad was in Exercise Science. I was trained as an Exercise Scientist, but in those more upper division courses when I started learning about the mitochondria and specifically redox balance or oxidative stress, which is perceived as maybe good, but maybe bad, that's where my intellectual curiosity really, really sparked. And I realized that exercise was good, but not everyone in the older population likes to exercise or they might not be able to exercise because of these chronic diseases. So can we improve these cellular things through other mechanisms outside of exercise? So it kind of blended my two passions together. - That's awesome. - So we got a little glimpse about all of your journeys, but now it's time to go into where all of you started. And we know the interest that you are studying now, but if you don't mind, let's get a little bit further into how you ended up here in our Colorado State University, College of Health and Human Sciences. - Yeah, so let's see. I have always enjoyed working with young people. I always sought out opportunities in my free time to tutor, to do some side teaching, even back like my first job when I was a teenager was I had my own camp where I like, you know, gathered up other little kids and, you know, played with them or, you know, we're gonna have activities where that was where I grew up in Maryland, yeah, it's in DC. Yeah, so I've always really just enjoyed working with kids, young people. But I didn't necessarily know right off the bat that I wanted to pursue a doctorate, pursue research, or even like work in this general area. So I first went and I taught English as a second language in another country. I did that for a little while in Chile. - Oh, wow, okay. - Yeah, so I did that. That was with young people, but it was actually with college age students. And then I came back to the States. I did my masters in communications, thinking that maybe I wanted to continue working internationally, but sort of more in like marketing and communications kind of realm. And then I realized, you know, that that wasn't necessarily for me. I went again abroad and worked in youth development as I was mentioning delivering life skills programming in rural communities. And that's kind of where the pieces started to fit together. Like I mentioned, you know, it was real. - Where was the second trip of the book? - That was in Costa Rica. - Okay. - So I was sort of, I was working for a small nonprofit, really limited budget. And I was looking for, you know, and we were collaborating with the public health, sorry, not the public school system. And we were looking for evidence-based programs and sort of like evidence-based tools that we could bring. But it felt like none of them had been made for the setting that we were operating in. And there were just all of these barriers and unique conditions that it just, we couldn't just take this, you know, program that had been developed in, even in Fort Collins, Colorado and drop it there. So I really got interested in how can we develop programs that work in different settings? What are those factors that when we're delivering a program we need to be aware of? So I moved, but I wasn't sure. I still wasn't sure then if I wanted to, you know, make the commitment of a doctoral program. So I came back and I got a job working at the University of Virginia in a research lab so that I could kind of try it out. Like what is this whole research world like? What is academia like? Do I like this? So I was in a lab that was studying student motivation. So how can we help students particularly, you know, be motivated to achieve in STEM disciplines? And I really loved it. And when I was, you know, sort of providing a support role there, I realized that I wanted to be able to lead my own research and develop my own research questions and that I really needed to go back and get my doctorate and develop, you know, that expertise and those skills. And so along the way, I had developed a personal interest in mindfulness. I had been doing mindfulness teaching in prison settings and I kind of decided that I wanted to combine, you know, all these different pieces of my journey together and study mindfulness with young people. And I looked around who's doing the best work in that area and several of them are here at CSU. And so that's how I ended up here. And I feel so lucky to get to work with the people that I get to work with and have the mentors that I have. I mean, just could not be lucky or so. - And you are free to drop names, please. - Law, okay, well, yeah. And that is Lauren Shoemaker and Rachel Lucas Thompson, just amazing, amazing scholars and people. So long and winding road. But I feel like from every experience that I've had has really built upon itself. And when I was in it, I couldn't necessarily see how everything was gonna play out, but looking back, it's like obvious how the pieces fit together. And I feel really, really lucky that I've had all the experiences that I have. - That's great, absolutely. Thanks for sharing. - Over to me. How did I find my way to CSU? - So like many exercise science freshmen, I wanted to be a physical therapist, specifically, I wanted to be a physical therapist for a ballet company 'cause I'm a former ballerina. So I wanted to combine those two. I loved science, really liked ballet. That's what I was gonna do. That's how I started out my undergraduate journey at a place called Slippery Rock University in Western Pennsylvania. And then about my sophomore year, I was taking biomechanics, which is similar to what you would look at, physics applied to the human body. And at the same time, I was taking chemistry and exercise physiology. And I was having a really hard time finding the motivation to study for biomechanics, but I really liked chemistry and exercise physiology. And I was like, wait, so why do I wanna be a physical therapist? So I walked into my undergraduate advisor's office and said, I don't think this is what I wanna do, but at the same time, I had joined a research lab my freshman year, the work that my undergraduate advisor was doing, he was like, you could go get a master's in exercise physiology. I said, great, how do I do that? Well, when you do more a research-focused program, you don't just need a program that merits this degree. If you earn it, you need to study a certain thing. And so he's like, you need to look back, what interests you, what excites you, mitochondria, redox biology, chemistry, biochemistry. I did have those answers. And so, I don't know, maybe a couple of months, lapsed by, and I was at a regional conference and someone from Ball State University, Dr. Hekiasna, well, I'm there. - She's right on the monitor, then. - Was giving a talk, and so I looked up their graduate programs, and they had this degree called human bio-energetics. And I was like, I wanna study that. That sounds cool, right? - That sounds pretty cool. - So I googled human bio-energetics, and there's about like three programs in the country that have titles, and one of them was Colorado State University, and I was like, Colorado. - And I've been at all three of those-- - Yes, and there's a whole 'nother story of why they're called that if you look at this academic family. And so, walks into my undergraduate advisor's office, I said, do you know anything about Colorado State? He did his doctoral work down the road at the University of Northern Colorado, and he said, yes, and I think Dr. Karen Hamilton would be a great mentor for you, and, fast forward, this was seven years ago, 'cause I also did my masters in her lab, and that's pretty much how I found my way. I walked up to her at a conference and said, hi, my name's Maureen, I'm interested in your research, and then the rest is kind of history. So, again, similar to you, Megan, winding road, that's not very linear, but here we are. - What was that encounter like? You know, I'm thinking of students who might be in your shoes if we flash back seven years and screwing up the courage to talk to some professor who I've never met, but my mentor says they're awesome and right? - Yeah, I was very scared, I know a couple of you have met Karen, so she's like the nicest person ever. When someone says I work for Karen, they're like, she is the nicest human ever, I'm like, I know. So, that was not a huge barrier, but I was definitely nervous. I walked up and was like, you know what? I mean, they're gonna do this, and this is gonna work out, but if I don't try, I'm definitely not gonna work for this person, and then I proceeded to also spend the rest of the conference effectively following around people from their lab and going to all of their poster presentations and meeting all of them so much that it's comfortable circle that I've talked to, people who graduated before me and they were talking about this presentation, I'm like, oh, I was there. They were like, you weren't even in the lab then, I said, I know, I was making sure I thought this lab was cool enough, so it was, so scary, but sometimes you just have to go for it. - Well said, good for you. Ross, what's your story? - Yeah, so how did I find my way to CSU, to graduate school? So I graduated with my undergrad from UNLV in Las Vegas. It's where I was from originally. I left there when I was 19 during the army. I stayed in the army until I was about 23, and then I got out, I finished my undergrad back home in UNLV, and I decided I didn't want to live there anymore in Las Vegas, I had to get out of the city, and so there's a lot of trouble you can get into in that city, and so I started trying to stay out of the trouble. And so I decided to either apply for graduate school or hike the AT, that was my two things. I was like, I would go hike the AT, or graduate school. I wasn't ready to jump right into teaching, and I had the means to not do that at the moment, so I was looking at graduate schools, and I wasn't really pleased with anything, to be honest, and I just visited my friend, he came here. He came to Fort Collins because he wanted to get into the marriage and family therapy program here in the Asia Fest department, and he didn't even get into it initially, but was like, I'm gonna move there anyway, and just, 'cause he loved Fort Collins so much, and so I was like, I see the city he loves, and so I flew out here, and I visited, and I fell in love with it, and he ended up getting into the graduate program, so he's an alum from the HDFS program and has matched his marriage, family therapy here, and I ended up getting into the English program here, and I was here for two years, and I just loved the community. I formed a really strong bond with the bedroom community here, with building that workshop out, and so I decided, with the advice from a couple of the faculty in the English department, to apply for the education department here at CSU, and so I applied for the PhD program back in 2019, and got in, you've been here since. - That's great, yeah, so you have some connections with ALVS, the adult liars, and veteran service, all of us, right? - Yeah, yeah, so when we first started, I worked with a little bit with Mark Barker and Lisa Chandler, who were the director, assistant director then, and now it's Ben Schrader, who's actually on my dissertation committee at the LVS director right now, and Ben, yeah, the LVS office in general, which is an amazing office here at CSU, and Ben, as an amazing human being, he also is involved in this work, he was involved with one of the largest national veteran writing programs in the country out of, I believe it's out of Pennsylvania, it's a warrior veteran writer's program at Pennsylvania, and they publish a book just like our workshop does a little bit bigger than they sell, there's a little across the country, but our workshop has published two books, we kind of follow a little bit in their model and their footsteps, and having been from the LVS to be able to support that process has been amazing. - Yeah, was there a moment in English when the I want a PhD emerged independently, or was it a mentor that kind of pushed you in that direction? - That's a great question, yeah, I think, yes, one of the mentors that really supported me was Sudo. - She's great, yeah, she's amazing. Her and her husband, Bill Doe, who was a West Point-- - He's a veteran, right? - Yeah, he was a West Point grad, and she taught at West Point, and so she graduated from the Education Department as well with her PhD here at CSU, and so they were a big factor in applying to that program, yeah, she's been a huge help throughout the years there. - These connections and networks really making an enormous difference, absolutely, absolutely, yeah. - So we want to talk about impact, what you think about the work you've done, and in many ways I expect that you're gonna want to continue to do, so talk to us about your aspirations for the impact of your work. - So I would say for my work studying aging and hoping to extend the human health span, in the confines, I wrote in the final paragraph of my dissertation, "What on Earth do you write?" On page, I don't even know, the final concluding, and I said something along the lines of the work that I've done make a minute aspect of all the manuscripts that have been published during my graduate time. However, they do essentially move things a little bit more forward, studying mitochondrial dysfunction and protein turnover and modeling these aspects of aging. However, when I look at my whole graduate experience, I think the greatest impact is what I've learned as a person and the impact that I as a human can have. So also during my graduate studies, I had the opportunity to teach a lot, a variety of classes. Funny enough, I ended up teaching biomechanics, so I now know something about it. And it really isn't that bad. And throughout my graduate studies, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do next. I love science, I love research, but I really developed this passion and interest for teaching, specifically undergraduate students. And because I remember back to my undergraduate days of having these faculty members who were encouraging, especially undergraduate studies, graduate studies, education is challenging. So having essentially an encouragement team behind you was very impactful for me. And so I kind of wanted to follow in that footsteps, becoming an educator in higher ed, to still teach people about how awesome the mitochondria is and how amazing exercise can be to improve health and to improve global health and maybe not just one cellular process of my favorite protein in the world. - I'm really curious. In seventh grade bio, when they introduce the mitochondria where you like going crazy, you're like, this is what I'm gonna do the rest of my life, are you watching? - Actually, I have a confession that in fifth grade, I failed a science test and was mortified because science just didn't feel for me 'cause I didn't really understand. It was a lot of just remember the vocab term and then regurgitate it and it didn't all click for me. And it was about chemical reactions, which is really funny now. That's kind of what I do on most days. It probably wasn't until I integrated it into like human physiology that I was like, oh, this is what happens when I go for a run. This is why I feel this way to have this like application aspect. So maybe it was more like later in high school, I would say. - Gotcha, did you say that was the catalyst to get you? - Oh yeah, that was the catalyst. That was the catalyst. I will say I was like the biggest chemistry nerd in high school 'cause like when you're in high school, you have biology, but that's not necessarily physiology. You have chemistry and you have physics. And I gravitated the most to chemistry and still to this day, I'll always say, I'm as positive as a proton, so. (laughing) That was, I remember that moment. - Yes, that's awesome. - So what impact, so I'm really hoping that the impact that my research has is that we can start to find, identify, so I'll start here. One of the big studies that came out recently showed that there are about 190-something different types of veteran programming that veterans get out and enter into when they're in their reintegration process and that they say benefit their well-being. And so we're in the long process right now of kind of identifying what programs actually support well-being over time and which programs aren't doing that, which one support and which one's considering well-being. And so hopefully there will be proof and concept of this workshop that we've been running for a very long time and we'll be able to get it into places like the VA and this model at least into different community programs. I mean, I'm running workshops that use this model now in Denver for the VA this summer, for the Creative Arts Festival. I'm running programs for local nonprofits in town, like Health for Heroes, forensic programs for them. There's some retreats coming up. And so the program itself, the model is being used in various forms all over the city. And so to be able to show proof of concept and say, hey, this is working for a lot of people and let's get this into places where we can make a difference and make an impact. There's a lot of these cool things going on right now at the VA, they're looking into tabletop games, for instance, the different ways to form community, right? Not everybody's gonna gravitate toward writing and there's definitely contention of obviously there's a barrier with literacy, but there's also a contingent of the people who wouldn't, veterans who wouldn't find that process all the beneficial or want to engage in it. So it's good to have an array of different ways that veterans can engage in different programs. And so hopefully this one will be one that veterans will gravitate towards and see the benefit and see the idea. - Great stuff. - Yeah, so kind of similar to something that you were saying, like one thing doesn't work for every person. And, you know, maybe some of you in this room have realized or when I said mindfulness, it's kind of like, oh, that's sort of buzzwordy. I feel like there's a lot of excitement about the potential of mindfulness for help, you know, supporting mental health, not just of teenagers, but we still don't understand enough about it and how it works and for whom it works. And anecdotally, as someone who facilitates the program that we are testing, I see it in the room. Like I see that it's clicking with some teens and not others. I see that some maybe are a little less, you know, a little more checked out. I see that some just, I'm getting that like glazed over look, like whatever you're doing is just not really connecting with me. And so I think we have a lot of room to grow in terms of these curricula that schools are really excited about, schools would be the big ones in terms of like, how can we get this in the hands of the most kids? But I hope that my work makes a contribution in terms of planting this idea that maybe there are other processes that we need to be attending to when we're rolling out these programs and how can we make them the best that they possibly can be so that when we put all this funding and effort into getting them in the hands of teens that it's actually going to make a difference. And then I guess more broadly, another dimension of my work is that it's, I'm really focused on working directly with communities to kind of co-create things that are going to work for them. So as part of my dissertation, I've been collaborating with some community organizations in terms like, where are we going to roll this out? Can we work together on recruiting teens? How should we market this? What's the language that we should be using? And I really hope that I can carry that into the next step of my career because I feel like that is key that we can't be as researchers, it's really important that we have this dialogue with whatever community is applicable in the context of your research because we can't just take these programs that are developed in very particular context, kind of getting back to how did I get here and drop them into other ones. And so yeah, I hope that I can be a researcher that always remembers to build these authentic partnerships with communities and have it be a joint effort to solve whatever it is, that big problem that we think is important is. - That's great. - That's awesome. - And the really models are way and grant mission very well. - Absolutely. - One more quick question. Next professional steps for you, right? And that may be aspirational, if you're not quite done yet, it may be very specific in some cases. So just a quick round table of yours, either what I hope to be doing, actually after I complete my degree, or exactly what I'll be doing next. Maybe we'll start with Raskin. - Yeah, so I mean, it would be wonderful if I could run veterans writing workshops the rest of my life and get paid to do that. But I think that there is a niche for that, but more realistically in the short term, I'm looking at different positions to teach writing across the country. And so I've recently applied for a couple positions on the East Coast, one of them was for the US Army War College as a sister writing professor. So just looking at different positions where I can still support veterans and service members while also through the process that I think is very beneficial, which is writing, while also finding a position that I really enjoy as well. And so that's the goal right now. I really love research. I like figuring things out. So I like to, I like answering questions that other people can't. And so I like, I wanna get into a position where I can do that, but I'm a teacher at heart. And so a workshop, I think, scratches that itch a little bit in teaching, but I would like to still be able to teach writing in a more formal setting because the workshop is still, it's very go with the flow, right, what you want. I give a little, some pointers and some prompts, but I like the formal act of teaching writing as well. And so if I could find a job where I can do all three of those things in one, that'd be great. - That's great, thank you, thank you. - I wanna keep doing research in collaboration with communities, whether that's in a position as a faculty member at a university where I'm writing grants in partnership with these community organizations, that would be great, or maybe there's some other kind of position that exists outside of a university-based role. I could see maybe working for a school district, thinking about how to evaluate the effectiveness of the social-emotional learning programs that they're rolling out, like, is this really working? What could we be implementing? What do we need to be considering for our particular district? So I could see going in a lot of different directions. I feel like just making sure that the work that I do is very applied and that I have those touch points with community members, practitioners, and of course, like the people who we're hoping to support and help. - Right here, right here. What's cooking? - Throughout your entire graduate studies, people say, "What do you wanna do next?" And I never had an answer, I finally have an answer. I kind of flinted the seed when I said with my impact of wanting to teach, so I've accepted a tenure-track faculty position at Slippery Rock University, which I mentioned. I did my undergraduate there, thank you. In their exercise science department, so I'm going back to my actual home. - And now your old mentor is a colleague. - Yes, my old mentor is a colleague, and a lot of the faculty there that I had for classes, when I was interviewing for the position, people said, "Are you familiar with people "in the search committee?" And I said, "Oh, I had all of them as professors." Which was kind of really kind of funny during the interview process, but really what I'm excited is to teach, to inspire undergraduates, to help them find their path. That's the best path for each of them. Maybe they do wanna be a physical therapist, or maybe they're exposed to something else, and that sparks their interest, so yeah. And of course, we're gonna learn about my account, Rhea. - Gotcha, very good, very good. Well, thank you all a ton. This is so much fun to do this, and we appreciate doing it in small groups, I just like this, so. Congratulations on your fellowship status, congratulations on finishing, we're rooting for others to cross that finish line soon, and we're hopeful that you will be able to chase those dreams that you've talked about. - It's been great for beer. - Thank you, this is fun. - Yeah, had a blast of them. - Thanks y'all. Another great interview is in the books. Thank you for listening to this episode of Health and Human Science Matters. Stay tuned for the next episode. It's on the way. If you haven't already, add Health and Human Science Matters to your library of podcasts. Give us a rating and leave a review. And if you want to learn more about our College of Health and Human Sciences at CSU, go to www.chhs.colostate.edu. colostate.edu. [ Silence ]