Dr. Bradley D. Hatfield was appointed the Faculty Athletic Representative (FAR) in September 2020. He enters his fifth school year in his role ahead of 2024-25.
The Faculty Athletics Representative reports directly to the president and serves as a senior adviser outside of the athletics department to the president on matters related to intercollegiate athletics, sports programming, student-athlete academic progress, student-athlete welfare, and athletic compliance issues. FARs are tenured faculty members who additionally represent the university and its faculty in the university's relationships with the NCAA and the Big Ten. In addition, they chair the Maryland Athletic Council, which functions as the faculty voice in intercollegiate athletics on issues of academic policy related to student-athletes. During their appointment, they also retain their regular faculty jobs.
Hatfield is Professor and Chair of the Department of Kinesiology and served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland, College Park from 2012 until July 2020. He also holds adjunct appointments in the Neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences (NACS) as well as the Center on Aging and a secondary appointment in the School of Medicine (Department of Epidemiology and Public Health). He is in his 38th year at Maryland, joining the University in 1982.Â
Hatfield received his Ph.D. in 1982 from Penn State, where he was supported by the Research Council of Canada as a doctoral fellow, and a Master of Sport Administration degree from the College of Business at Ohio University in addition to a Master of Science degree from Penn State. He holds two bachelors degrees in Physical Education and Psychology from the University of New Brunswick in Canada. While at UNB, Hatfield competed for the football team. He also served as an intern with the Baltimore Colts in 1982 after completing an appointment as a graduate assistant football coach at Ohio University. He has served on the Football and Wellness committee of USA Football and as a performance consultant to teams in the NHL and NBA, including the Washington Wizards and Capitals, as well as the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
Hatfield served as President of the National Academy of Kinesiology (NAK), the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA), and the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) from which he received the Honor Award (2013). He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Kinesiology, the American College of Sports Medicine, the Research Consortium of the Society of Health and Physical Educators, and he is a charter Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology (AAASP).Â
Hatfield's research expertise is the study of Human Performance (learning motor skills and performing under mental stress) from a neuroscience perspective. He proposed the concept of psychomotor efficiency of brain processes as a theory to explain expert cognitive-motor performance. The research is conducted on populations ranging from athletes to first-responder and military personnel using brain imaging technology to study attention and emotional resilience to stress. He has published in a number of scholarly journals including Neuroimage, Cerebral Cortex, Psychophysiology, Biological Psychology, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Neurobiology of Aging, Experimental Brain Research, Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, Journal of Gerontology, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology, and others and recently held membership on the editorial board of the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, while currently, he is a member on the boards of Psychology of Sport and Exercise (PSE) and Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology (SEPP), which is published by the American Psychological Association, while also serving as a grant reviewer for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Hatfield's research efforts have been supported by the Department of Defense – Army Research Office (ARO), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Lockheed-Martin Corporation, the American Heart Association, the Erickson Foundation, and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health and Information Technology. His lab is currently partnered with the Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence (VLRCoE), housed in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, to study human factors in piloting of helicopter aircrafts under challenging conditions.
Updated July 1, 2024
