Dr. Shawn Cradit
Respond with Compassion
Associate Professor, Sport Health Science & Athletic Training
May 2020
Dr. Shawn Cradit, Associate Professor in the Sport Health Science & Athletic Training programs at Life University (LIFE), interviewed with several schools before coming to work at LIFE in March 2019 because she felt at home. “The campus really stuck out to me. It wasn’t so big that you felt like you were going to get lost. When I got home, and I was talking to my boyfriend and my sisters, I just kept coming back to how the campus was intimate.”
Cradit grew up in a small town in Michigan called Chesaning, where she played football for three years and was the only girl on the team. This sparked a lot of controversy; however, she loved the game, and it furthered her love of athletics that has lasted throughout her life.”
Cradit works in the Master’s of Sport Health Science and Master of Athletic Training degree programs at LIFE. In the Department of Sport Health Science at Life University, the degree programs explore numerous aspects of optimal human performance, from the elite athlete to members of the community improving their fitness. The mission of the Department of Sport Health Science at Life University is to educate and prepare students for careers in fields related to fitness, health and sport, and to enable these students to be successful in a variety of fields.
The Master of Sport Health Science program has five different tracks: Chiropractic Sport Science; Exercise and Sport Science; Nutrition and Sport Science; Sport Injury Management; and Sport Coaching. The Master of Athletic Training has a focus on hands-on application of skills within a variety of sports and clinical training. Specifically, Cradit teaches graduate and undergraduate sports injury management classes.
A typical day for Cradit includes many meetings. She is on the IRB committee, the QEP management team committee, the scholarship committee, and she has a faculty meeting almost every Tuesday and Thursday. Right before she goes home, she spends an hour in the office getting organized. Cradit describes herself as a self-evaluator, and she evaluates every class she teaches so that she’s sure she is doing everything that is needed for her students.
Cradit is currently in the process of combining projects with other departments on campus, such as the Nutrition Department. She helps with different orientations and campus tours and promotes her program as much as possible.
One of the most rewarding experiences Cradit has experienced at LIFE is the Compassion Integrity Training through the Center for Compassion, Integrity and Secular Ethics (CCISE) at LIFE. “I’ve had students stand up in class and go off on me and say horrible things because they were upset about a grade, and I learned through the Compassion Integrity Training that I need to take myself out my own feelings and put myself in their shoes so I can better understand where they may be coming from.”
The CCISE is dedicated to developing and promoting empirically based programs that foster the human values most conducive to individual, social and environmental flourishing through research, dialogue, education and community empowerment. The Center seeks to engender a world in which people act out of an awareness of our common humanity, innate potential and inherent interdependence, as expressed in the University’s values of neo-vitalism and Lasting Purpose.
“I understand that everyone goes through different circumstances and different situations and choose to respond in different ways than how I might choose to respond, so the Compassion Integrity Training has been very helpful,” Cradit shared. “I encourage all of my students to have compassion for each other because we are all in this together.”
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