Kayleigh’s Nomination
I am writing a letter of recommendation on behalf of Ms. Kayleigh for the OSCAR Undergraduate Student Excellence Award. I’ve known Ms. Newman for over two years now with our first interaction during interviews for a Summer Impact project this past summer. Kayleigh has worked with me on a 2022 Summer Impact grant and then continued as a work study student for academic year 2022-23 and 2023-24. I’ve been able to observe Ms. Newman in a variety of capacities and feel confident in my ability to evaluate her scholarly contributions as an undergraduate OSCAR student. With that being said, I would strongly recommend her for the OSCAR Undergraduate Student Excellence Award.
The research projects Kayleigh has been involved with are part of my Fit2Serve Project. The Fit2Serve project provides support to emergency responders in the region by providing fitness assessments and exercise programs. The organizations the Fit2Serve project is currently working with are Fairfax County Fire and Rescue, Prince William County Fire and Rescue, the Virginia Army National Guard and George Mason ROTC. Goals of the project are to better understand the health of emergency responders throughout the career span by providing a service to these individuals. Specifically, Kayleigh has helped with conducting fitness testing of firefighters and ROTC cadets, delivering exercise programs virtually to firefighters, data entry, developing recruitment materials and disseminating findings.
Intellectually she is an outstanding student, regularly demonstrates critical thinking and actively engaged as an undergraduate student. She has been able to apply knowledge from her undergraduate work in Kinesiology. With the research projects she’s been involved with she has made positive impacts, taken advantage of opportunities to grow and showing increased independence. During the Summer Impact project and the past year working with me she has been extremely reliable, a quick learner and made substantial contributions to our research projects. Although she is currently a junior undergraduate she is more capable than many of the master’s level graduate students we currently have in our program.
Kayleigh has taken advantage of several opportunities to present the work she has been involved with. She has presented a poster at the American College of Sports Medicine Southeast conference the past 2 years, will be presenting at American College of Sports Medicine National Conference in Boston, MA this Spring, and the National Strength and Conditioning Association National Conference in Baltimore, MD this Summer. To my knowledge she is the first undergraduate student from the B.S. in Kinesiology to present at a professional conference in many years. She will also be presenting for the 2nd year at the upcoming National Council of Undergraduate Research.
Outside of her involvement with research Kayleigh is extremely involved with many other activities, and in my perspective, her ability to be so engaged, while maintaining a 3.9 GPA, is very impressive. For example, Kayleigh is a volunteer with the Fauquier Fire Department, OSCAR Peer Leader, gymnastics coach, Kinesiology Club officer, Kinesiology Student Ambassador and works multiple jobs. I firmly believe she is a ’superstar’ and is going to be one of the most successful undergraduate students from our academic program down the road. Perhaps, most importantly she has intangible qualities of a team player and excellent character.
To conclude I strongly recommend Ms. Newman her for the OSCAR Undergraduate Student Excellence Award. From my experiences she displays all the qualities of an undergraduate student deserving of the OSCAR Student Excellence Award. Please feel free to contact me with any further questions.