Kean Athletics Hire Dr. Lorin Tredinnick as Managing Assistant Director of Student-Athlete Development

By Ruben Nieves | Published March 24, 2022

Kean University’s athletic department announced the hiring of Dr. Lorin Tredinnick as their new Managing Assistant Director of Student-Athlete Development.

Tredinnick was first interviewed by the athletics department in November and had her first visit to the university in December.

“That was when I first had the opportunity to meet everyone in person including Kelly (Williams),” Tredinnick said. “Not only did I meet with Kelly, but I also met with the search committee, I met the women’s swim coach, and I met with the athletics administrator.”

Before being hired at Kean, Tredinnick was working at Rutgers-New Brunswick where she was the Learning and Development Supervisor in the School of Social Work and the Institute for Families.

“I loved working at Rutgers,” Tredinnick said. “I did my undergraduate and masters at Rutgers. When I was an undergrad at Rutgers, I started working with the school’s social work, I started as a research assistant.”

After starting off as a research assistant, Tredinnick was promoted to an administrative assistant and would be promoted once again. She would then pursue her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut.

“I left my job in 2015 to pursue my Ph.D. at UConn,” Tredinnick said. “Once I graduated from UConn, I went back to Rutgers. I loved my experience working at Rutgers and have nothing but great things to say about the school.”

Tredinnick also spent some time at Northeastern University, based in Boston Massachusetts, where she had an internship.

“I did an internship which turned into a consulting position,” Tredinnick said. “My internship was with the Center for Sport Society and had a program called Mentors in Violence Prevention.”

The program did gender-based violence prevention training with students, student-athletes, professional sports, and athletic administrators.

During her time at Rutgers, partnering with Title IX and working with the Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance, Tredinnick was developing a course about Title IX.

“The course was going to be a mandatory e-learning course for all incoming students at Rutgers,” Tredinnick said. “It would educate them on what interpersonal violence looked like and where to go for help.”

The course is still currently in development according to Tredinnick and the plan is for the course to go live in the next fall semester. With the course currently in development, Tredinnick would like to partner with some of the organizations on campus.

“I would love to partner with the organizations on campus to see how we can support the students here and how we can support the education programs here,” Tredinnick said. “It’s definitely something that I’m going to be focusing my efforts on.”

Tredinnick wanted to be a part of student-athlete development back when she was an undergraduate.

 “When I was an undergraduate, I really wanted to major in exercise science and I realized I can’t handle all the science classes, it’s not for me,” Tredinnick said. “I was looking at sports management and sports marketing, I knew I wanted to work with student-athletes, I just didn’t know what that looked like. That’s when I decided to pursue social work and I felt that social workers had such a unique skill set that can support athletics and student-athletes.”

Having been working with student-athletes for a long time, Tredinnick admires how student-athletes are able to manage everything they do.

“They are really balancing a lot on their plate, between their classes, their practices, weight training, all of the competitions and the pressures they have to face,” Tredinnick said. “They are in a unique position where they are balancing that dual role as a student and an athlete, I just really admire them for that. I enjoy it so much; I feel like they bring so many transferable skills when they’re ready to go on the job market and I want them to recognize that they are talented and unique.”

Since being a part of Kean Athletics, Tredinnick hopes to bring a different perspective to working with student-athletes.

“As a sports social worker, our approach is looking at the person and their environment and trying to take a holistic approach to working with student-athletes,” Tredinnick said. “While they may be really busy with academics and practices, I’m really looking at how we are connecting student-athletes to different resources so they can not only thrive as a student-athlete but after sport and what they are going to achieve later on in life.”

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