Athletic Training and Sports Medicine
The faculty in Athletic Training and Sports Medicine focus on research which relates to the delivery of clinical health services to physically active individuals including the pathoetiology, prevention, assessment, and treatment of common athletic and orthopedic injuries. Specific themes of research include: the mechanical and functional instabilities of joints, the role of proprioception and neuromuscular control in orthopedic pathology, the development of functional assessment protocols for injured athletes, the control of pain and swelling after injury, skeletal muscle physiology and injury, clinical modalities, athletic training education, and sports injury epidemiology.
Graduate students become actively involved with research projects under the direction of faculty members. Collaborative arrangements exist with faculty and clinicians in other areas of the University including the Penn State Center for Sports Medicine, the Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation, and the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics. Didactic coursework in athletic training and sports medicine is complemented by courses in biomechanics and locomotion studies, motor control, exercise physiology, and statistics and research design. Students applying for graduate studies in the Athletic Training and Sports Medicine area of Kinesiology need to be NATABOC certified.
Facilities
The Athletic Training Research Laboratory was founded in 1999 and serves as an area for data collection and analysis as well as graduate student offices. Equipment includes a wet lab space for biochemistry and histology, an electromyography and electrogoniometry system, a force plate, an isokinetic dynamometer, and other clinical assessment tools. A physical exam and treatment area, a functional testing area, and extensive computer equipment are also located in the lab.
The Athletic Training Education Laboratory serves as the location of clinically based under-graduate athletic training courses and contains educational resources such as physical examination and rehabilitation equipment, anatomical models and computer simulation programs, and a gross cadaver lab. Extensive physical examination and treatment areas also complement this area and make it a frequent site of research activities.
Graduate students and faculty also have access to a wide variety of clinical populations and research equipment in other areas of the University such as the Penn State Center for Sports Medicine and the campus athletic training facilities.
Faculty
To learn more about individual faculty and their research, please click on the links below.
Faculty who mentor students in this area
- William E. Buckley, Professor of Exercise and Sport Science and Health Education
- Nicole M. McBrier, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology
- S. John Miller, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology
Additional faculty who have an interest in this area
- Neil A. Sharkey, Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education; Professor of Kinesiology, Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation