How I Got Here

My journey in the health education field began at Oklahoma State University as an undergraduate when I had no idea what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I began college majoring in engineering, quickly realizing that the field was not for me despite my parent's influences in the field. I decided to take a semester to figure out what I wanted to declare as my new major by taking all general education courses. I figured I would have one shot at this if I wanted to graduate in 4-5 years. I ended up taking a health introduction class. I discovered the Peer Health Education program on campus and joined immediately to help me meet new people and get more experience in the field. Long story short, I changed my major to Health Promotion, completed 2 different peer health programs and worked as a student worker in the Health Education department. Five years later, I have been working as a Wellness Coordinator at The University of Texas at Dallas for nearly 4 years. Needless to say I found my passion and my career path and hope to continue in the filed for many years to come.

When I first became a health educator at a university I focused on the "typical" health education topics like alcohol, sexual health, nutrition and stress. As time went on the health education needs for the student body began to change. There was a greater need for prevention programming and efforts for subjects that were more related to mental health and personal safety issues. A few years ago I began offering presentations to students about consent, bystander intervention and personal safety issues that may arise in situations involving alcohol. Now, with the federal mandates of Title IX that were recently released, my daily duties are mainly focused on sexual assault prevention and bystander intervention. I have come to really enjoy informing students on the ways they can protect themselves, how they can protect others and provide a basic understanding of definitions related to sexual assault and relationship violence. I have a feeling that sexual assault prevention will continue to expand in the health education field and hope to provide the best approaches and programming possible to help prevent sexual assaults from occurring. This blog will help inform other health educators of the efforts I am currently applying to a college campus and pass along other helpful information. 

In my spare time (what is that?) I  spend time with my family and friends. I have a wonderful husband and a great circle of friends. There seems to always be a birthday, anniversary or holiday to celebrate so we are very busy nearly every weekend. I also have great friends at work so there is never a shortage of laughter and fun in my life. I hope the laughter and fun times continue for many years to come. What is life without laughter?