Jackie Elliott retires after 35 years
The director of the AT program since it's accreditation was a dedicated leader to staff and students
In July 2024, Jackie Elliott stood in front of a new class of athletic therapy (AT) students to welcome them to the program for the last time. Elliott told the new, somewhat nervous students, the same thing she told every class before them
“I am here to get you through this program,” she says. “That is my commitment to you. I’m going to see you through. If you’re dedicated, I’m going to meet that dedication with support in any way, shape or form that I can while I’m here.”
Elliott, who has directed the AT program since its accreditation in 2000, will retire in June after 35 years at the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management. Looking back on her career, she says she feels a great sense of pride—pride in the students who worked to succeed in the program year after year.
“I’m proud of them and that I was able to help them grow,” she says. “But it was all their hard work. I don’t take any credit for that. I have so much pride in them.”
Elliott’s true goal has always been to help find success, whether that’s educational help or helping someone get back to work or play after an injury. She says it doesn’t much matter how she helps them, so long as they find a way to achieve their goals.
“That’s what I like doing. I like helping people, I like teaching, I like doing therapy,” she says. “It’s what gets me up every morning to come to work.”
An athlete at heart, Elliott says she was injured a lot during her time competing. While pursuing her first degree, a Bachelor of Physical Education, she took a prevention and care class, which introduced her to the world of athletic therapy.
The class allowed the students to shadow the clinic and experience its work with Bisons student-athletes, something Elliott found particularly interesting. She says physiotherapy was a popular post-graduation profession for many in the faculty, but she hadn’t been too attracted to the notion of working in a more “clinical” setting.
“I wanted to work with athletes; with high-performance people,” she says.
Elliot worked in the Bisons Athletic Therapy Clinic during the early years of her teaching career. Learning under influential AT leaders like Gordon Mackie and Glen Bergeron [BPE/73, PhD/93], Elliott helped develop (and was one of the first graduates of) the internship program, the precursor to the current AT program.
“I got to do everything. I got to educate and help the patients while helping them recover,” says Elliott. “It was just all my strengths; all my passions melded in one.”
Elliott was hired as an assistant athletic therapist and, within two years, had taken over the director role. Soon after, the program was accredited in 2000, and the first AT students graduated in 2001.
“She is the central pillar and laid the foundation for the growth and success of the athletic therapy program,” says Monte Wong, Coordinator of Rehabilitation for the Philadelphia Eagles and graduate of the Bachelor of Exercise and Sport Science Degree (now Kinesiology), majoring in Athletic Therapy in 2002.
Wong says Elliott helped foster a strong sense of community between the students, creating lifelong relationships, something he is forever grateful for.
“You’re so much more than just a student with Jackie,” says graduating AT student Karine Boucher. “She helped foster friendships between the class. They became my family.”
Boucher, who came to FKRM after two years at Laurentian University, says things were hard for her when she first joined the program, and she often felt isolated and alone. She says Elliott saw her struggles and reached out to support her.
“She always goes above and beyond what she needs to,” says Boucher.
Elliott’s outreach didn’t just apply to students. Byron Bahniuk, one of the program’s instructors, says Elliot helped mentor him when he started with the faculty.
“The mentorship that she brought on her own accord was invaluable. It was just a matter of me trying to absorb it as quickly as possible,” says Bahniuk, who has been working with Elliott for over two decades. “We just want to try and pay her kindness forward to future students.”
Bahniuk says Elliott embodies the values UM wants from its community leaders, with a strong devotion and commitment to helping her students and colleagues. Dr. Douglas Brown, Dean of FKRM, says Elliott was one hundred percent committed to every student in the AT program over the years.
“Her investment in their success and well-being has been unwavering,” says Brown.
At the orientation, like every year prior, Elliott doesn’t hide the fact that the program asks a lot of its students. But she made it clear that she is here to help the students, whether it’s weekend spinal board clinics or being a shoulder to cry on.
“It’s so fun. It felt like we were playing around, but we learned a whole chapter of material,” says Kayly Nim, a third-year AT student, about a weekend clinic Elliott put on. “It’s not like a party, but it feels very close.”
While many around her have seen the AT program as “her program” for many years, Elliott says it has never been hers. She says it is and always has been the faculty’s program, and she has just been lucky enough to be in charge of running it.
“I hope they continue to change and adapt the program, keep up with the times, look at potential opportunities and take advantage of them,” says Elliott. “I’ve been here long enough.”
Elliott says she is excited to see someone else’s vision guide the program and see their passion take it in another direction. She says that most of all, she hopes the program continues to be supported by the faculty and graduates students who are healthy and successful at the national exams and the next steps in their careers.
Elliott says she is excited about the next chapter which will involve working with first responders, search and rescue training, Habitat for Humanity, learning golf and a few new languages. She says she is excited about what comes next, but it’s her friends and colleagues in the faculty she’ll miss the most.
“It’s the people I love; the people here. Retirement is bittersweet because I’ll miss being here with them,” she says.
While this chapter of Elliott’s career is coming to a close, her legacy in the program will be honoured with the naming of the Jackie Elliott Athletic Therapy Lab and the Jackie (Elliott) Academic Knowledge and Education Sharing scholarship, awarded annually to an AT student who has demonstrated a high level of leadership in the community or with their peers.