Staff Profile of Dr Nichola Callow - School of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences

my name is Nicola callo and I'm a reader

in sports psychology here in the school

of sport health and exercise sciences

when I was 18 I had conducted a levels

in geography biology and ancient history

and at that time there were no a levels

in physical education or sports science

however I was particularly interested in

that side of things so I applied for

Bangalore and Birmingham and had the

place in grades at those three

universities and on visiting the

different universities I decided that

Bang was the place for me and I actually

came from the Southeast of England and

at that time there was no a 55 so I

actually took nine hours to get here

much to my father's delight but it's

been a thoroughly enjoyable experience

and I continued to thrive here when I've

completed my PhD here I then went on to

be director of postgraduate taught and

developed the portfolio of masters

programs here I then went on to be the

deputy head for teaching and learning

and develop the sport science outdoor

activities degree in the sports science

physical education degree and then I was

promoted to deputy head of college and

in our College we have sports science

psychology health care sciences and the

school of medical sciences we've started

to look at interdisciplinary programs

across the different schools for example

exercise behavior change and also a

batch of medical sciences degree and

then two years ago I was appointed as

director of postgraduate taught so I

oversee all of the masters courses

across the university I have two main

strands of research so one is mental

rehearsal for performance so for example

if you were a football player and you're

about to take a goal you might image or

mentally rehearse you taking the goal to

improve your performance or for

confidence enhancing aspects and you

probably saw in the Olympics a lot of

different athletes mentally preparing a

mentally rehearsing prior to their

performance so will it look at the

different aspects of that the second

area of research relates to

transformational leadership

higher education and the influence that

lectures can have to enhance student

learning outcomes such as motivation and

engagement so I basically have a broad

portfolio in terms of the sport area but

also higher education which links to my

teaching and learning roles but the

moment I have a PhD student who's funded

by sport Wales and she's basically been

employed to conduct research in the area

of coach education and improving our

elite coaches in Wales to deliver

psychological skills to athletes and

there's great interest in this program

and the evaluation side from UK Sport

particularly with regards to talent

identification so that's an area that

we're really excited about at the moment