CARLA MILLER
Dr. Carla Miller, joined the Ohio State University in 2007. However, it was years before in 2005 that I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Miller when she was a faculty member at the Pennsylvania State University. I was interviewing at Penn State for graduate school and still indecisive on whether I was destined to be a basic or applied scientist. Dr. Miller was the last of the PSU Nutrition faculty on my roster. After a grueling day, Dr. Miller greeted me with her warm smile and as I parted shared with me some words of wisdom. Those words would go on to influence my decision and have an impact on my life to this day. Luckily for us, in her transition to the Ohio State, Dr. Miller brought that same smile and inspiration that would have an overwhelming effect on her students, colleagues, her research endeavors and more recently the OSUN program.
Dr. Miller has appeared to settle into her role as assistant director of the OSUN program. Yet, such an interdisciplinary program faces several challenges including administration, management and engagement of staff and faculty members who span across many disciplines and departments within the University. Working closely with Jeff Firkins and from the support of her other colleagues, Dr. Miller has began taking action to improve communication among faculty, initiate discussion with her colleagues to tackle programmatic issues and has added value to the seminar series by increasing the breadth of nutrition across the many OSUN disciplines. These steps are not only intended to enhance comradery and create consistency among staff and faculty members, but will also have a profound effect on the quality of the graduate studies education.
One of the most talked about programmatic issues is the OSUN curriculum. Each student must complete the core requirements, which some are concerned that the core curriculum is inadequate at addressing the clinical study of human nutrition. I asked Dr. Miller for her input on how the curriculum could be improved to enhance nutrition education for our students. Dr. Miller envisioned a new curriculum to include a course or several courses that address nutritional epidemiology, nutrition and dietary assessment, behavior and even policy. The addition of these classes will expand the current core to aid students in learning and appreciating all aspects of nutrition science spanning from applied to basic.
When asked what drives her passion for research, Dr. Miller shared a personal story of a close friend who suffered and succumbed to the disease of type 2 diabetes mellitus. The memory of her friend’s life pushes her each day to determine why and understand how people make behavior changes and decisions that ultimately affect the outcome of their illness. Even when she encounters obstacles in her research she calls up her “we can do it” attitude and recalls the many notes that she received from study participants who were personally inspired by Dr. Miller to make lifestyle changes that have improved their quality of life.
So with OSUN, research and teaching on her plate, what’s next for Dr. Miller? Well more research of course! Dr. Miller is currently working on a project funded by the National Institutes of Health that supports what is called mindful meditation. Mindful meditation is a behavioral approach that raises awareness to the selection of food choices and the process of food consumption including hunger and satiety cues. The goal for those who participate in mindful meditation is to not only make lifestyle changes to improve their diet but also to improve their health through weight loss and improvement in markers of diabetes control when compared to the standard diabetes education program.
Dr. Miller has witnessed that people can make changes to improve their overall wellness and quality of life. Her most simple way of putting it, “all it takes is finding the individual qualities that enable people to “tip their scale”. Yet as she pointed out, it takes effort and perseverance to continue the commitment down the road of change. For some people the motivator may be watching their grandchildren grow up or just to improve their overall health because being alive is a gift. As we ended our chat, Dr. Miller took me back to our meeting years before. Her final statement provided even more inspiration and was a testimony to her many life’s experiences and years of acquired wisdom, “in life it’s the journey, not the destination.”
-Michelle Battista
