Exercise Science Students Win Three Categories of Awards at Regional Meeting

Stavros Kavouras

Megan Rosa, from left, Lisa Jansen and Lauren Wethington are pictured with their awards from the American College of Sports Medicine.

Three University of Arkansas students studying exercise science brought home top awards from the Central States regional meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine this fall.

Lisa Jansen won the award for best doctoral student, Megan Rosa won the award for best master's student and Lauren Wethington won the award for best undergraduate student.

Jansen won for her research presentation titled "Effects of Plasma Osmolality on Glucose Regulation in Healthy Males." Osmolality is a blood index of dehydration. In a lab, dehydration can be studied by increasing plasma osmolality. Jansen's research showed that dehydration decreases the body's ability to effectively regulate blood glucose in normal healthy males. This phenomenon is called insulin resistance and it is usually the first step prior to type II diabetes.

She has planned a follow-up study to be conducted in the spring semester applying a similar protocol to male and female subjects.

A native of Dietzenbach, Germany, Jansen earned a bachelor's degree in physical education from Mississippi Valley State University and a master's degree in exercise science from West Texas A&M University. She is in the first year of the kinesiology doctoral program in the College of Education and Health Professions at the U of A. Her faculty mentor is Stavros Kavouras, associate professor of exercise science.

She expects to graduate in May 2019 and plans to pursue a post-doctoral research appointment and then a position in academia to continue studying diabetes.

Rosa's research project was titled "Autophagy Regulation After Diet and Exercise in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease." She was looking at a cellular process called autophagy that removes damaged parts of the cell but malfunctions when a person has fatty liver disease, causing a buildup of dysfunctional cell components. She was looking at whether exercise or diet effected the process. She found that both diet or diet combined with exercise fixed some aspects of autophagy but diet combined with exercise appeared to fix all components of autophagy. She plans to investigate the process more in depth in the spring to try to determine why. Her faculty mentor is Nicholas Greene, assistant professor of exercise science.

Rosa is from Olathe, Kansas, and earned a bachelor's degree in exercise science and chemistry from Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas. She plans to pursue a doctorate at the U of A after she completes her master's degree next spring.

Wethington's project was titled "The Ergogenic Effects of Acute Citrulline Malate Supplementation on Weightlifting Performance in Trained Females." Citrulline malate is part of the nitric oxide pathway and is believed to increase nitric oxide concentrations in the blood. Nitric oxide causes blood vessels to dilate and has been implicated in increased exercise performance. Wethington found an overall increase in performance among college-age women who used citrulline malate as a supplement during resistance training compared to women who took a placebo. Her faculty mentor is Michelle Gray, assistant professor of exercise science.

Wethington is from Lawrence, Kansas, and is a member of the Honors College at the U of A. She plans to graduate next spring and pursue a career as a physician's assistant.