NOCSAE Board Updates

NOCSAE Welcomes New Research Director Kim D. Barber Foss

NOCSAE Research Director Kim D. Barber Foss

Kim D. Barber Foss, PhD ATC brings with her a passion for innovative research and a clear vision for her new role as she succeeds outgoing Research Director, Frederick O. Mueller, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor, UNC-CH. Barber Foss has published extensively in the areas of injury epidemiology, biomechanics, and brain injury and has 29 years’ experience as a certified athletic trainer. She is an associate research scientist at the Emory University Sports Performance and Research Center (SPARC), which utilizes a lab-to-field

research approach to sports injury in young athletes. Barber Foss also spent fifteen years as a Senior Research Assistant in the Sports Medicine Division at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital where she was involved with biomechanics, epidemiology, and concussion research and was director of the Brain Network Activation Lab.

More about the research director position

The research director position oversees NOCSAE’s Grant Program, which has underwritten more than $13 million dollars in research over the past 50 years. As research director, Barber Foss will chair NOCSAE’s Grant Review Committee, co-chair the Request for Proposal Committee and hold a seat on the Scientific Advisory Committee. Barber Foss has relinquished the NOCSAE board position, which she held for four years as the representative from the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA), to assume the duties of her new leadership position.

More about Barber Foss

Barber Foss’s further experience includes her role as the coordinator for the National High School Sports Injury Registry, which was a large-scale NATA project. She currently serves on the NATA COPA Analytics and Outcomes Committee.

Barber Foss’s honors include the 2018 Gatorade Secondary School Athletic Trainer of the Year District 4, 2019 NATA Service Award, 2020 NATA Most Distinguished Athletic Trainer Award, and 2020 NATA Secondary School Athletic Trainer of the Year award District 4. She was also selected as the 2019 Girl Scouts of Western Ohio Woman of Distinction.

NOCSAE Welcomes New Board Member

Stan Jurga Jr has been appointed by SFIA to fill its open position on the NOCSAE Board of Directors (representing the Producers ANSI interest category). Stan is the VP of Product Development at All-Star Sporting Goods – a brand that specializes in baseball & softball protective hardgoods for all levels of play.

Stan’s role in the industry is unique in that he has one foot in the test lab and one foot on the field. He splits time between developing new products with his design and engineering team while also being the main point of contact with professional athletes who wear All-Star products. Stan can be found in All-Star’s in-house NOCSAE impact test lab by morning and later that afternoon he might be seen at Fenway Park showing pro players the latest prototypes and listening to their insight.

Stan graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Sciences, was a staff researcher at the Harvard Robotics Lab and then completed a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. After managing a biotech startup Stan officially joined All-Star in 2005.

NOCSAE Research Director Announces Retirement

After 15 years of dedicated service to NOCSAE, Fred Mueller, Ph.D. is retiring. During his tenure with NOCSAE, Fred managed 359 full grant applications, ultimately funding 40 grants totaling $8,435,000. Mueller significantly elevated and advanced NOCSAE’s grant program and the organization’s contribution to athletic equipment research, understanding of injury risk threshold and athlete safety. NOCSAE Executive Director Mike Oliver noted, “Fred has carried the banner in the research area with incredible skill and a humble attitude. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best as he begins his next chapter.”

No stranger to achievement, Mueller was honored in 2016 with a Lifesaving Research Award from the Korey Stringer Institute for his exceptional dedication as the former director of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is also a recipient of the National Federation of State High School Associations’ Award of Merit. In recognition of Mueller’s contributions to sports safety, NOCSAE made a donation to Mueller’s Gathering Place, an outdoor garden created and dedicated to honor Mueller at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Mueller was a faculty member at UNC for 41 years and chaired the Department of Exercise and Sports Science from 1995-2005.

NOCSAE Welcomes New Board Member

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (August 5, 2020) – The announcement was made at the NOCSAE Summer Board meeting on Friday, July 24, 2020, that Will Rodecap has been appointed by the Athletic Equipment Managers Association (AEMA) to serve on the NOCSAE Board of Directors as a (consumer/user) voting member.

Rodecap, who is the head athletic equipment manager for the Athletic Department at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., will be replacing Alan Ansell, a former coordinator of athletic facilities with Bishop’s University in Quebec, Canada, who has represented the AEMA on the board since 2005.

Rodecap is a longtime member of the AEMA and he has been an AEMA certified equipment manager for more than 20 years. He was elected vice president of the AEMA June 2018.

Prior to Rodecap’s work as the head athletic equipment manager at Kansas State, he worked from 2008-2011 at the University of Kansas Athletics Inc., in Lawrence, Kan. as the Olympic Sport Equipment Manager, overseeing baseball, men’s and women’s golf, as well as women’s tennis and volleyball, competing in the Big 12 Conference.

He also previously worked as the head equipment manager at Colorado State University for seven years, and the head equipment manager at the University of Tulsa for three years.

“We are excited to welcome Will to our board of directors,” says NOCSAE Executive Director Mike Oliver. “I have found him to be extremely helpful, knowledgeable, and well-versed in what NOCSAE does and where we are going.”

Rodecap has a Master of Education degree in adult education and human resources from Colorado State University and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from Kansas State University.

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GoToMeeting with the NOCSAE Standards Committee To Be Held on Aug. 14, 2018

The NOCSAE Standards Committee will convene an online meeting on Tue, Aug 14, 2018 from 10:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. CDT (11:30 a.m. to noon EDT) to discuss and vote on the requested revision to ND081, and to establish an effective date for the revision if approved. The redline version of the requested revision is available on the NOCSAE website at https://nocsae.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ND081-18am18-REDLINE-003.pdf.

The meeting will be recorded and is open to the public. If you are interested in joining this meeting, contact Mia Katz at mia@nocsae.org and you will be provided with login information.

The opportunity to make comments during the meeting will be limited by time, so if you have comments specific to this revision you want the committee to address, please make them in advance of the meeting through the website here. You must be registered on the website to make comments. If you do not wish to register, but still want to submit comments, please do so directly to Mike Oliver at mike.oliver@nocsae.org before Monday, August 13.

If you have any questions, please contact Mike Oliver or Melinda Cook.

In Memoriam

John Miller, M.D., a long-standing board member and past president of NOCSAE, died on June 27, 2018.

Miller, a former director of the Indiana University Student Health Service who also worked for Indiana University as a physician, director of sports medicine, and professor of kinesiology, attended NOCSAE meetings as a representative for the American College Health Association.

He served for 38 years on the board of directors, and he was president from 1986 to 1997.

“John was a pioneer in college health and athletic medicine on college campuses,” says NOCSAE President Ken Stephens, RPh, MD. “He will be missed.”

A scholarship in John Miller’s name is currently being established by NOCSAE.