Joey Brown and Addie Roberts Receive OATA Exceptional Undergraduate Research Awards
Two newly minted Wilmington College graduates share the top prize from the Ohio Athletic Training Assn. undergraduate research competition held May 8 and 9 at Great Wolf Lodge Conference Center in Mason.
Adeline Roberts and Joseph Brown, athletic training majors from Franklin and Dayton, respectively, received the OATA Exceptional Undergraduate Research Awards for their poster presentations at OATA’s Annual Meeting and Symposium.
(ABOVE) Joseph Brown and Adeline Roberts display their awards.
Three other WC students also presented their research, including Caroline Guindon, Jamie Kolb and Brad Hamilton.
Roberts’ research presentation, which was titled “The Female Athlete Triad: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You,” also won the Best in Class and President’s Choice Award at Wilmington College’s Student-Faculty Research Forum earlier this spring.
She co-authored her research with faculty members Jennifer Walker, associate professor of athletic training, and Dr. Erika Goodwin, professor of athletic training and vice president for academic affairs.
Brown titled his presentation “Evidence-Based Practice: A Lack of Confidence, Knowledge, and Implications in Athletic Training,” which was co-authored by Goodwin; Alex Rhinehart, assistant athletic trainer; and Larry Howard, athletic training program director.
Their abstracts will be published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Allied Health: Official Journal of the Ohio Athletic Trainers Association.
Goodwin praised their work and mentioned that, having such research experience, will serve them well in graduate school, which is in the plans of both graduates.
“It makes them very well prepared,” she said. “Presenting their research at the state conference, having their abstracts published and winning this award provide a testament to their tenacity and diligence — this is just a foreshadowing of successful careers to come.”
Goodwin mentioned that each passed their Board of Certification for Athletic Training this spring, so the research award provided “an icing on the cake.”
Roberts will begin a program in physical therapy later this summer while Brown is exploring his options in the allied health/medical fields.
Goodwin said Wilmington College holds a prominent place at the annual OATA conference and regularly has the most student poster presentations selected for the symposium.
“This really puts the College’s ‘hands-on learning’ into practice,” she added. “It’s one thing to take a class on research and statistics in athletic training and to do a project for the class, but it’s a whole different experience when you actually disseminate it and share your findings in the literature and at a conference with interested colleagues.
“That really instills a lasting impression in our students.”
