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 future philosophy
to research is to therefore use larger sample sizes (>24) in all the research
that I do. I want to exploit the added statistical power of using multiple
regression, discriminant function, multiple analysis of variance, and even more
advanced approaches such as modeling, time series designs, and path
analyses. In addition, because of the limitations in past research that
has used small sample sizes (<8) and is likely to have caused type II errors,
there is a body of research that is fundamental to the core of exercise
physiology content that needs to be redone with my proposed improvements in
research design, and the increased sensitivity of today's computerized
technologies. Examples of these fundamental topics are;