June 8, 2021 | Erin Bluvas, bluvase@sc.edu
The number 21 is just part of the current calendar year for most of us. For Dale Murrie, 21 has additional meaning. In 2021, she celebrates 21 years of being a parent to her daughter, Zoë, who graduated from the College of Charleston (Murrie’s own undergraduate alma mater) last month, and 21 years with the Children’s Physical Activity Research Group (CPARG).
After earning a master’s degree in teaching from The Citadel, Murrie surprised herself by ending up back in her hometown: Columbia.
My favorite thing about my job is the ever-changing nature of the position.
-Dale Murrie, Project Coordinator for the Children's Physical Activity Research Group
“I feel like I live in a small town where everyone knows each other, and I thought it was a great place for Scott and I to raise our daughter, and our Goldendoodle, Fitzgerald,” she says. “Whenever I visit other places, I’m always happy to come back to Columbia.”
Murrie, who taught group fitness classes for 25 years, combined her lifelong passion for health/physical activity and training in education when she joined CPARG in 2000. Housed in the Department of Exercise Science and led by professor Russell Pate, CPARG is an interdisciplinary team of faculty, staff and graduate students dedicated to the research and promotion of physical activity in children and adolescents. Their expertise includes designing and implementing evidence-based interventions and informing public health policies.
“Dale Murrie is an amazing professional who has made an enormous contribution to our CPARG team,” says Pate. “She joined CPARG to serve as a collector of qualitative data, and she remains highly skilled in that area, but over the last two decades her role has expanded and diversified to include administration of direct observation protocols, collection of survey data, participant recruitment and retention, and project management. She has performed all these duties with great competence and good humor. She has been and is a wonderful representative of our research group.”
Through various roles and titles, Murrie has contributed to numerous projects during her two decades with CPARG. She joined the team while they were working on a project promoting physical activity among high school girls (LEAP). Murrie then contributed to TAAG, also aimed at reducing the decline of physical activity among adolescents – this time focusing on middle schoolers with a randomized, multi-center field trial. More recently, she has worked on SHAPES (i.e., a professional training program for preschool teachers and childcare center staff members to help address/prevent childhood obesity and shown in the above photograph) and GO SHAPES, the online version of SHAPES.
It’s been such an honor to grow with CPARG, working with wonderful people and being involved in all of these fantastic studies and projects over the years.
-Dale Murrie, Project Coordinator for the Children's Physical Activity Research Group
At present, much of Murrie’s time is spent on CPARG’s involvement in the National Physical Activity Plan, working directly on nine sectors and providing support for a 10th sector, the Ad Hoc Military group. She is also the project coordinator for the Physical Activity & Public Health Courses that Pate will direct in Columbia this fall.
“My favorite thing about my job is the ever-changing nature of the position,” Murrie says. “It’s been such an honor to grow with CPARG, working with wonderful people and being involved in all of these fantastic studies and projects over the years. I would never have imagined the opportunities that have come my way, and I will be forever grateful to Russ Pate for giving me those opportunities.”
The Staff Spotlight Series is sponsored by the Arnold School's Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.