Public health major Salvador Jaime finds time to balance undergraduate life, and research through the college’s Undergraduate Research Award Program (URAP). With mentor Kathy Gunter, Salvador has spent his senior year investigating the health and fitness of the fire-fighter population in order to find the relationship between fitness parameters and back injuries. Salvador worked with a research team to create a fitness protocol focused on flexibility, muscular endurance, and muscular strength to prevent and treat back injuries.
Through the URAP Program, Salvador says “I’ve learned a lot about the research process. There are a lot of steps that need to be taken along the way and its’ been helpful to learn how to go about starting a project.”
Since his primary interests lie in the field of research, URAP was a great way for Salvador to figure out what areas of research he’d like to pursue. Through his project and the fitness testing, he learned how to watch for signs of fatigue, and possible injuries. He has also gained skills through working with participants and learning how to adjust to each person’s attitude in order to perform the fitness tests.
“Interacting with the URAP students has been really beneficial”, Salvador adds. “Just being able to talk about the research while getting a lot of practice through speaking to your colleagues about the projects really helped”.