SHRS Blog

Thanks to her career in clinical work, Kelsey Voltz-Poremba wants her teaching to foster a passion for helping people. 

I’ll admit it. Walking into Dr. Dilhari DeAlmeida’s Foundations of Health Informatics class was intimidating. Informatics buzz words like “Tableau” were embedded in the syllabus. However, her outgoing kindness made all those feelings immediately dissipate. “Call me Dilhari,” she told us. The classroom quickly became a safe place to make mistakes, ask questions and become more familiar with, well, what health informatics is anyway.

Whenever the Panthers score a goal on the soccer pitch, Sports Science Master’s student Kevin Madigan is right there to break down the mechanics of it all. His internship with the Pitt women’s soccer team helps bring to life the lessons learned in the classroom. 

With an undergraduate degree in Kinesiology, Caroline Pellegrini was eager to advance her career with a graduate degree that would allow her to bridge athletics and human performance research. When she found the one-year Master of Science in Sports Science program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS), it was the perfect fit.

We get a lot of questions about the Master of Rehabilitation Technology (MRT) online program: Will I still get the best educational experience? How will my online training translate to the ‘real world’? Can I still get hands-on experience? Will I have the same experience as others in residential programs? Can I access labs and research initiatives? Excellent news for you, dear readers! The answer is a resounding YES.

We developed the DPAS program based on one main consideration: Practice-based learning and analysis by PAs advances the quality and value of the care we provide. Our perspectives are informed by our experiences as clinically practicing PAs, PA educators, administrators in a school dedicated to training a variety of health care professionals, and graduates of a doctoral program.   

As pre-health students we hear professors, guidance counselors, Youtubers--pretty much anyone in academics telling us we need to “stand out”. Why? Because  graduate programs in the health fields have gotten quite competitive. The accepted GPA range continues to rise and the extracurricular expectations seem to increase each year. This may be due to a higher number of students applying, but it’s also because of higher expectations set by schools for their incoming classes.

When he isn’t scoring points on the court, former Charlotte Hornets Forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist doesn’t stick to the bench–as a person who stutters, he is a passionate advocate for this speech disorder that affects about 1% of the population. Speech-Language Pathology Assistant Professor Mandy Hampton Wray was excited to invite him to the Pitt School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS) to share his experiences with her class of aspiring SLPs-to-be. 

All eyes will be on SoFi Stadium this Sunday as the Los Angeles Rams square off against the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI. In addition to Rams and Bengals, there will also be a few Pitt Panthers on the field–namely LA defensive tackle Aaron Donald (’13) and Cincinnati wide receiver Tyler Boyd (’15). One spectator this Sunday will be watching the game through a different lens: The lens of Sports Science.  

This time of year, like clockwork, people start the new year with fresh hope and big plans. Many people even make formal resolutions, and almost as many people abandon their resolutions a few weeks into the year. Yet, we continue this pattern, year after year. It’s not an exercise in futility.  

Find your passion. This is a phrase we hear a lot in college. It seems simple enough. Choose to study what you love most, right? But for many of us, this task is a lot more daunting than what it’s made out to be. It seems like we have one shot to choose the correct path because we’re consistently told, “You’re going to be doing this for the rest of your life.” As students, just learning about ourselves and starting to establish our life goals are extremely scary.  

I was fortunate to be able to attend a Continuing Medical Education (CME) conference recently. It was the first conference I had been to since the start of the pandemic. I thought I would fall right back into that familiar conference-attendee flow.