Professional Philosophy

Why I Am A Professional

I think it is important to know how a person in the exercise sciences views his or her job, and the related professional functions and responsibilities.  This is especially important in the field of the exercise sciences, as we are not viewed as professionals, nor function as professionals in the strict sense of the word "professional".  For example, in the context of vocational employment, the word profession implies that there is some sort of organized body that oversees the duties and conduct of the members of the profession.  Unlike most dictionary definitions of the word "profession", to be a professional involves more than earning an income/livelihood from the employment.  A profession has a template of standards and ethics from which members of the profession must adhere.  These requirements must be developed, policed, and enforced by the members of the profession, thereby upholding another quality of professional existence, self regulation.

As a university-based exercise physiologist, who directs my functions?  Is there any external body that overseas how faculty function in exercise physiology within their discipline?  What is my code of ethics?  How can my functions be fairly evaluated if there are no standards, devised by exercise physiologists, for my peers to read, understand, and implement in their evaluation of me?  What does all this mean to the quality of the work that I do, and more importantly, to the consistency of the standards of this quality between the different exercise physiology programs throughout the USA?

My identification of the aforementioned questions have led me to be convinced that exercise physiology is an advanced and admirable topic of academic and research inquiry.  As you may or may not know, I have pursued this belief by focusing considerable time and energy by co-founding a professional organization for exercise physiologists in 1997 (the American Society of Exercise Physiologists, ASEP), presiding over this organization (1998-2000), and accepting the responsibilities of editor-in-chief of ASEP's internet-based research journal (JEPonline) (April 1998 -present).

A person with an undergraduate degree in exercise science/physiology is highly trained, at least equal to any other recognized allied health profession such as nursing, physical therapy, nutrition/dietetics, etc.  In fact, exercise science students undergo more training than many other medical-related professions (eg: pulmonary therapists, radiology technicians, etc.).  Consequently, exercise science students who major/focus in exercise physiology deserve to graduate and be recognized as a professional.  After all, the body of knowledge and laboratory skills taught in exercise physiology are needed in corporate fitness, wellness, community fitness, and clinical markets.  In addition, there is tremendous potential for entrepreneurial applications of this body of knowledge.

Why Has It Taken So Long For Exercise Physiology To Become a Profession?

I have been quite vocal in by expression that exercise scientists have been apathetic to strive to attain professional status.  In part, this is due to a perception that the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) caters to the disciplines of the exercise sciences.  However, this is not true.  Despite the ACSM referring to itself as a sports medicine and exercise science organization, it cannot be both.  The ACSM has members from a diverse number of disciplines and professions, which was the intention of the founders of this organization.  By the very fact that exercise scientists, or even exercise physiologists, do not comprise the total membership, the ACSM can not be a professional organization to exercise physiologists or any other of the exercise sciences.  The issue is as simple as that.

These comments (facts!) do not mean that I am against the existence of the ACSM.  The ACSM is a very needed and well respected organization that functions to "connect" the many professions and disciplines related to exercise, for the good of the collective body of knowledge and application of this knowledge to those who need it.  I simply disagree that the ACSM "controls" the exercise sciences, and I continue to express my frustration that for many reasons, which I will not go into in this forum, the power figures within ACSM are stubbornly resilient in hindering the needs of exercise physiology and the process for all exercise physiologists to become professionals.  I find this attitude to be unprofessional, unethical, and undeserving of my support at this time.  The ACSM is a great organization that is being run with tremendous disrespect to exercise physiologists.  The problem is not the organization, but the administration of the organization!

All exercise physiologists need to recognize the important duties we have in developing and maintaining our profession, and contribute as best as they can to these duties.

Teaching

As a university professor, teaching is my primary responsibility.  I am a university-based educator because I believe that teaching is perhaps the most satisfying and important vocation of them all.  To teach has been a desire of mine since my high school studies, and has continued to grow in importance to me during my undergraduate training as a physical educator, my 3 years of high school teaching in Australia, my 6 years of graduate education and training, and my continuous employment as a university academic since 1990.

However, I did not always recognize that teaching was so important to my professional existence and clear conscience.  When I started my university employment, I viewed the undergraduate students as the reason for why I can be there.  I viewed the graduate students as cheap labor to assist me in my research, and I was the center of my professional functions.  I was a professor to develop my career and not those of my students.  I wanted to complete "x" number of research projects each year, submit and present "x" number of research abstracts each year at scientific meetings, and feed my ego as often as I could by seeing my name in print in a prestigious research journal.  Recognition as a researcher was to be my stamp of success, and teaching was just a means to that end in the university arena.

After approximately 5 years of this existence it became very clear to me that the development of my career was not the purpose for my being a university professor.  The students deserved to be the focus of my professional existence, and although being a productive researcher had a positive impact on my competencies as a teacher, my research moved from being the end objective, to the means to being a better teacher.

I now strongly believe that teaching is more than a classroom activity.  In fact, university-based employment also recognizes this, as duties such a advising, mentoring, directing theses and dissertations, and curriculum development are all components of the "teaching" component of tenure.  I receive tremendous satisfaction, and at the same time recognize the power and responsibility given to me, in directing the professional future of my students.  Whether these students are at the undergraduate or Ph.D. level, I have the power to develop their outlook on life and shape a path for them to strive to reach their professional aspirations.  The satisfaction from teaching is not confined to the grade sheet, but has an arguably greater test in the employability of the students, and the eventual employment of the students in a field where they can use their exercise physiology training.

My transformation from a self centered ego driven academic to a student and teaching oriented professional was first expressed in my desire to write (co-author) my own exercise physiology textbook.  I wanted to improve the teaching standards within exercise physiology, and a new book seemed a great, although time consuming and tedious, place to start.  I co-authored my first book - a graduate/advanced level exercise physiology text, which was published in 1996.  My co-author (Scott Roberts) and I then revised the content of this text so as to develop a introductory exercise physiology text, which was published in 1998.  The second edition (2003) of this textbook is now published.

My evaluation of the exercise sciences in the USA also led me to believe that too many university-based exercise physiologists still function as I did when I began my career.  How could I think otherwise.  Exercise physiology was a discipline that was drifting along with no direction, and each year was being devoured, topic by topic, by other professions.  There was no organization that existed to nurture exercise physiology, and as I found out, no sports medicine organization that recognized these needs to be important.  Why did my predecessors not nurture the very discipline they helped develop?  This question still still irritates my soul, yet rather than accept this situation, I wanted to change it for the good of the education of the students in exercise physiology, and the improvement of their eventual employment conditions.  Consequently, the co-founding of ASEP was just as much an issue of my recognition to the importance of the educational processes in exercise science, as it was a means to allow communication at all levels and on all topics by exercise physiologists.

Research

When reading research on issues pertinent to exercise physiology there are some glaring inadequacies.  Exercise scientists, as well as medical and pure and applied scientists too often use inadequate numbers  of subjects, ignore limitations to statistical power and the related existence of type II errors, and are over-reliant on research designs suited solely to t-tests and analysis of variance techniques.  Similarly, research studies are designed to control for as many extraneous variables as possible, making it more likely to find a significant influence of the dependent variable, while at the same time limiting the application of the findings to the real world.

Based on the previous information, a main line of inquiry within the exercise research is to determine physiological differences in one dependent variable between groups (cross-sectional), or between controlled conditions (experimental) using one (repeated measures) or more groups.  As previously explained, many variables are controlled, and there is an underlying assumption that one variable is most important in determining the physiological responses to whatever is the controlled or differentiating variable(s) at question.  This single variable becomes the dependent variable, and efforts are made to reveal how influential it is in exercise physiology.

Most exercise scientists and research scientists in general are taught to follow this line of reasoning, and the statistical and research design requirements of this approach.  However, I have recently come to question this approach.  Why should we expect to find one singularly important variable in any physiological system, when it is clear from human physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology that the body is regulated by many inter-related phenomena?  For example, when  one regulation system is made redundant another takes over, and often a regulation system is dependent on the physiological interaction of multiple variables.  For a good example of this fact, see my 1998 manuscript on the multiple determinants to VO₂max during acute hypobaric hypoxia.

In my opinion, we would learn more from human physiology research if we used more subjects in a given research study, and then used this approach to investigate the influence of multiple variables on the physiology at question.  Surely results that showed the relative importance of multiple variables to a physiological response provides more information and improves understanding better than the isolation of one variable under highly constrained/controlled conditions.

My philosophy to the service component of my university tenure has evolved with my increasing years of university employment.  Obviously, service duties must be curtailed in the early years of university pre-tenure existence so that efforts can be focused on teaching and research, the two most important components of the tenure and promotion evaluation process.  Nevertheless, junior faculty in a university setting must become involved in service, especially at their college level, to make themselves recognized by peer faculty from other academic programs.  Placing a face and personality to a name on a folder is too important for words to describe during any evaluation process.

Once tenured, the balance of service with the other duties of teaching and research depends on the individual.  Some people are more suited to service on committees than others, just as some people are better teachers and researchers.  Personally, I am so involved in graduate education that my teaching and research take priority over service.  I am responsible for the education and professional development of too many students to spend large amounts of time and energy in university service.  My graduate student load drains my time due to the added requirements to procure grant money for our (mine and my students') research, and the time to train my students and assist in pilot research for their eventual thesis and dissertation research.