2025 Student Award Winners

The Arnold School is proud to announce the recipients of the 2025 Student Awards. With nominations from across all six departments, the school-level awards recognize the top master's student and top doctoral student. Each department honors students with awards based on the programs they offer. Congratulations to all of the award winners and nominees! Learn about the journeys of a few of these winners and other graduates with these stories.

Arnold School Awards

Jeffrey Keith Mattison Outstanding Student Achievement Award - Julie Warren

Julie Warren

Known for her commitment to service, leadership and public health, Julie Warren has been an inspiration to peers and faculty during her two years in the M.S. in Advanced Athletic Training program. Her supporters point to her professionalism and empathy as key attributes that make her a role model in the field.

Warren’s service activities include providing medical care for more than 50 athletes in the Special Olympics South Carolina’s Nothing But Net basketball tournament as well as to the Columbia Infantry Elite and Premier Teams (U.S. Premier Hockey League).

In the leadership realm, Warren has led the Graduate Chapter of the South Carolina Athletic Trainers’ Association as president (and previously served as secretary) and served as an active member of the South Carolina Athletic Trainers’ Association's Public Relations Committee. Her efforts have been recognized with university (Outstanding Athletic Training Student Award for Excellence in Leadership, Outstanding Athletic Training Student Award for Excellence in Academic Achievement), state (Terry Lewis Post-Professional Scholarship), and national (Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers' Society Hall of Fame scholarship) awards.

Warren’s graduate assistantships included taking on the role of Head Athletic Trainer at Fairfield Central High School, where she oversaw the health and well-being of over 330 student-athletes. During her assistantship with the USC Football Team, she not only provided medical care to the athletes, but she also mentored and coordinated the schedules of more than 20 undergraduate and graduate students.

Warren is also an advocate for the athletic training profession – lobbying at South Carolina’s Hit The Hill Day. For her master's research project, she conducted research into risk factors for heat illness among collegiate athletes. After graduating with a 4.0 and an invitation to join the Iota Tau Alpha Honor Society, she will join the Atlanta Falcons as a seasonal athletic trainer.

This award is presented each year to the master's level graduating student who best exemplifies the special characteristics of Jeffrey Keith Mattison, an epidemiology and biostatistics student who passed away early on during his program. To remember his life, initiative and motivation for work in public health, the Student Public Health Association (now the Dean’s Student Advisory Council) created the Jeffrey Keith Mattison Outstanding Student Achievement Award.

Doctoral Student Achievement Award - Hannah Parker

Hannah Parker

Hannah Parker came to the Arnold School to advance her studies in exercise science, which she began at Berry College, where she played soccer, and continued with a master’s degree at Wake Forest University.

As a student in the Ph.D. in Exercise Science program, she found two homes in the Arnold School. The first was with the Maternal and Child Health Scholar Program, where she enhanced her training in conducting research related to children’s health. She even received a grant from the program to conduct her own research.

Parker found a second home as a graduate research assistant with the Healthy Kids Initiative. In this role, Parker worked with childhood obesity prevention experts like Bridget Armstrong and Michael Beets to assess a range of children’s health concerns, such as the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their health and well-being. She also developed expertise in the daily movement of children to better understand active/sedentary patterns and their health impacts. This has become her specialty area, which she will pursue as her primary line of research moving forward in the context of exercise oncology as a post-doctoral fellow at Colorado State University.

With additional support from a Norman J. Arnold Doctoral Fellowship and a SPARC Graduate Research Grant from the USC Office of the Vice President for Research, Parker has been able to pursue independent research. Combined with her collaborative projects, she has published 22 manuscripts (three as first author) and has been recognized with multiple nominations from the American College of Sports Medicine.

In addition to mentoring Magellan Scholars, master’s students, and medical students, Parker has served as an unofficial ambassador for the Department of Exercise Science and a go-to person for connecting with prospective students. Faculty and peers say she is a key contributor to the environment’s academic and social fabric and a team player who actively engages and supports others.

This award is presented to an outstanding doctoral candidate graduating from the Arnold School. Students are nominated by Arnold School faculty, and selection is based on academic performance and achievements as well as their potential for professional contribution.

Department Awards

Outstanding M.S. - Residential Student of the Year Award -
Outstanding M.S. - Distance Education Student of the Year Award -