Students improve exercise science, nutrition knowledge – GCU News

“Ahh! He’s in so much pain!” states Michael McKenneyeyeing a high school student whose injured arm should be in a splint.

Knowing the athletic trainer, he thought, it was time. Let us help!

But on Monday, it wasn’t the Grand Canyon University athletic training professor who was helping, but his students who were trying to help. They jumped in to show a group of high school students how to relieve a simulated wound on a volunteer patient as part of GCU’s first Exercise Science and Nutrition Day.

One of the students, Jerome Zitois a pre-physical therapy major going to PT school in August.

He asked students attending the pre-athletic exercise skills lab, one of a dozen labs and lectures in the nearby Catalina Building and Technology Building on Exercise Science and Nutrition Day, “Can anybody tell me the key to splinting?”

The answer was fast and furious, something like this: “Slint must be tight.”

Zito shook his head, but remembered, “But you don’t want to stop the blood flow.”

The key to splinting, if students don’t know before the hands-on skills lab: Immobilizing the joint above and below the injury.

Then came the hands-on demonstration of taping a simulated fractured radius patient to a rigid device, the high school students who attended watched intensely.

This activity is repeated in every corner of the classroom as GCU’s athletic training students Lexi Anderson, Kaitlyn Vigil and Megan Peterson also dived right into the huddled group of aspiring athletic trainers to supervise them in splinting techniques.

In other classrooms and labs, visitors can also hear “Sports Nutrition 101,” make their own trail mix in the GCU Fuel Lab, or explore the occupational therapy and anatomy labs during the event’s tour.

About 500 high school students from schools of sports medicine, sports training, nutrition and similar programs are registered to attend Exercise Science and Nutrition Day, representing 14 schools and individual registrations.

College of Natural Sciences professor Dr. Cindy SeminoffThe chair of the department of exercise, sports and nutrition science, said that Exercise Science and Nutrition Day is a throwback to Health Science Day, which he taught for many years at GCU until a little more than a decade ago.

“We thought it would be a great event for local high school students to highlight our program and related professions,” said Seminoff, who also led the lecture “Sports Medicine Team: Who’s Who on the Health Care Team?” He asked questions like, “What are the job prospects for sports psychologists?” and this, “Can you imagine having an internship in high school?”

Yes, absolutely you can, Seminoff said of such an opportunity. Cold calling is a great way to do that. Just start calling the employer or dropping into the clinic and ask if there might be an internship or shadowing opportunity for you.

“They saw how interested you were. How could they refuse you?” Seminoff said.

In a classroom across the hall, students sat through “The Power of Food: How to Talk (and Think) About What We Eat.”

Associate Professor William Kueh asked the audience if they eat three meals a day. Not all of us shoot hands.

How many are snackers and graze all day? she also asked.

It’s easy to polish off a big bag of Doritos while watching TV without realizing it.

“It’s called mindless eating,” he said.

His advice: Buy a small bag of chips so you don’t have access to those family-sized bags.

Another crowded area in Monday’s event was the POWER Lab, one of the slew of campus Lopes Live Labs, where students can get hands-on experience in various fields of study.

The POWER Lab – standing for Performance Optimization, Fitness and Exercise Research – is home to a CNS undergraduate research group that focuses on kinesiology, sports performance, nutrition, biomechanical analysis and fitness.

Junior Colton RegerPOWER Lab undergraduate researcher, was one of the GCU students demonstrating the equipment in the lab.

He and fellow GCU students showed visitors something called PhysioFlow, a cardiac output monitoring system that uses six electrodes to measure changes in electrical impedance in the thorax to calculate changes in blood flow.

“I’ve always thought that this device, PhysioFlow, is really cool because it’s something you see in movies or traditionally in a lab where you get real-time heart rate monitoring. Now, it’s not fun just because he’s resting,” Reger said of the GCU student volunteer with electrodes attached to him. “But when we have someone training, it’s good to see the adaptation that the body starts to do to that training.”

He also spoke to visiting high school students about his research on chronotypes, people’s natural tendencies that are genetically influenced to sleep and be active at specific times. The thought is that adjusting your schedule and your chronotype improves the quality of your sleep.

His team investigated “whether night or morning is a better time to exercise,” he said.

Reger said of Exercise Science and Nutrition Day, “It’s a great opportunity to really show what you know, because they’ve taught us so much.

Another GCU student researcher in the POWER Lab talked about how the university’s sports medicine, athletic training and nutrition students are helping the university’s club sports teams, for example, by building fitness programs for them.

What’s really important to Michael McKenney about this show is the opportunity to see his work. Several alumni of GCU’s athletic training program returned to the university on Training and Nutrition Day as educators, e.g Chelsey Gonzalezwho teaches sports medicine at Ironwood High School in Glendale, Arizona, and brought 21 students with him.

“I saw a lot of familiar faces,” said Gonzalez, who graduated from GCU in 2014. But she also said she was “amazed by how much the campus has changed.”

“That’s my favorite part,” McKenney said. “See they are have effect now. It’s just doing it.”

Internal Communications Manager Lana Sweeten-Shults can be reached at [email protected] or at (602) 639-7901.