Miami University Recreation Blog

Lifeguard: guarded all pools and worked swim meets

Swim Instructor: Taught swim lessons

ARC Instructor: Taught CPR/First Aid, and Lifeguard classes

Student Manager: Managed lifeguard staff, conducted monthly inservices, completed audits of staff, completed admin work for Aquatics team

Customer & Facility Services Intern: Managed student staff in the Customer & Facility Services department (Reception, Pro Shop, IRC, and Student Managers). Completed all hiring, training, and scheduling of staff. Served on Student Development committee. Managed the staffing budget for the department. Conducted red shirt drills and monthly inservice training for staff.

As we’ve learned over the past few years following the COVID-19 pandemic, it is incredibly important to take care of ourselves. This not only includes our physical health, but also our mental health. This can be achieved by being a part of a community. Even after all these years, I am still able to say those from Miami’s Rec Center are a part of mine.

I am extremely involved in my community, which makes sense given my extensive involvement in organizations during undergrad as well. I currently serve as the recruitment advisor for Miami’s Chi Omega chapter, which is the sorority I was a part of at my time at Miami. In my free time, I am a member at Orange Theory, a high intensity fitness studio. I play on an all-women’s recreational softball team April through August every year, and then in the fall play in my company’s recreational kickball league. I also travel a lot, with many trips to Norris Lake and Lake Cumberland annually, a cruise to Mexico, Honduras and the Bahamas earlier this year, as well as a recent trip to Madison, Wisconsin.

Since my freshman year of undergrad, Jen Wood was always my biggest mentor and is who led me down the career path that I originally took in recreation. She helped me determine what I needed to pursue recreation as a career, and supported me along the way, even when I left Miami for the YMCA Director role.

Ron Siliko was also a huge influence for me. He is the reason I became the Customer & Facility Services Intern, as I originally wasn’t considering it since I was looking for primarily aquatic positions at the time. He helped me branch out of aquatics and take on this new role and helped me grow within that role as well.

Then of course, I have to give honorable mentions to John Mihevic, Terri Shannon, Mike Arnos, Doug Curry, and Beth Keith, among many others. You all shaped me during my collegiate and early professional years, and I am forever grateful!

In 2021, following the early days of the pandemic, I decided to leave recreation, and change career paths. It was a scary leap going into clinical research, as I had only ever worked in recreation and sports. I began as a Project Coordinator at Medpace, completing administrative work for clinical trials. I was good at this job, but did not have a passion for it like I did for recreation. Within a year at Medpace, I was able to leverage my experience at Miami’s rec center, as well as my director role at the YMCA, and was able to transfer to our Training & Development department. Typically, individuals must work in a role for 3 or more years before given the opportunity to transfer to training, but the Executive Director was very impressed with my history of management and training, like running monthly inservices, red shirt drills, and teaching CPR/lifeguarding classes. It was this experience that allowed me to transfer as quickly as I did and launched my career in Training & Development.

You don’t have to have it all figured out right now. Plans change, and that’s ok.

Oh gosh, there are too many to pick just one!

1. I always loved the paper plate awards in aquatics

2. Being thrown in EVERY pool when I graduated from undergrad, because multiple people wanted the honor of throwing me in and insisted that because I did so much at the Rec, being thrown in one pool wasn’t enough.

3. Chaperoning a group with OPC and traveling to West Virginia to go white water rafting. We only fell out once, and it was because we were the only raft that attempted to go through a class 5 rapid (and we ALMOST made it too!)

4. Winning second place in the chili cookoff! And honestly, just eating all of the food at every chili cookoff, pie competition, etc.

5. Attending and presenting at ORSA and Lead On conferences

6. Organizing beginning of the year training for the Customer & Facility Services Department