WATCH: Florida Tech Scholar-Athlete Spotlight Recognizes Volleyball Player Katie Erdmann

majors in Business Administration with a focus in Healthcare Management

ABOVE VIDEO: Scholar-Athlete Spotlight Ep. 5: Katie Erdmann

BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Being a scholar-athlete at Florida Tech takes an incredible amount of hard work and dedication to excel both in the classroom and on the field.

In this Scholar-Athlete Spotlight, we feature Panther volleyball player Katie Erdmann, a redshirt-sophomore who is majoring in Business Administration with a focus in Healthcare Management and a minor in Sustainability. She is in her first year at Florida Tech.

Learning about the healthcare system is incredibly vital in our current times, so we asked Katie what drew her to the field and what she wants to do in it after she graduates.

■ What is your major at Florida Tech? Why did you choose this direction for your education and is this something you always wanted to pursue?

■ Right now, I’m majoring in Business Administration with a concentration in healthcare management and I’m also getting a minor in sustainability.

I always knew that I wanted to do something in the health field, and I really appreciate the business side of things.

My father runs a business, so it’s something I kind of grew up with having that ability to tie healthcare and business is something that I really looked into and enjoyed.

The pandemic really showed quite a few problems that we have in the healthcare industry in regards to efficiency and perhaps some issues that you didn’t necessarily think we had before something like this happened and impacted us on a global scale.

So, from my point of view and with my major. I get to look at the administrative side of things a little bit more.

Minoring in sustainability helps create a degree that’s more well-rounded in this day and age.

Everything is about going green, trying to reduce carbon footprint, greenhouse gases, and introducing even if it’s just a little bit of myself to that environmental science field is really going to help my degree be a little bit more versatile,

■ What made you choose Florida Tech?

■ So, I have a little bit of the STEM degree with that minor in sustainability, but I believe that a business degree is kind of a business degree wherever you get it.

However, from Florida Tech I’m introduced to those different aspects of the STEM fields, and that kind of makes my degree from here hold a little bit more weight than those who are also seeking employment wherever I may be.

■ How do you plan to use your degree after graduation?

■ I plan on furthering my education here at Florida Tech and getting a Master of Business Administration in healthcare management as well. But I would like to enter an administrative role in a hospital setting.

I’m really looking at a risk management director, which they deal with different liabilities and certain aspects of that business side of the hospital.

■ How has being a collegiate athlete prepared you for the work you are currently doing? What traits do you take from the field that help you be successful?

■ Just like every other athlete so many things are going to translate into the real world, whether it’s leadership qualities interpersonal skills, or just that drive and that hard work because you know what you have to do on the court, and you also have to balance it with your education that as an athlete, when you go into the real world, you’re going to have those experiences that maybe not everyone else will and that’s really going to translate into success in your future.

■ What advice would you give prospective athlete who’s looking to enter the world of healthcare?

Keep an open mind, everything’s changing around us every day. I mean, we saw it with the past two years with this pandemic. Ten years ago, I’m not sure many people in administrative roles would have had the ability and been prepared to handle something like this.

So, I think it really opens your eyes to what may be was underlying that we didn’t see before and so coming into a degree like that in trying to stay in the healthcare field is really something that is going to make you a valuable employee to a future employer.

■ What have you enjoyed the most about your new team this season?

■ Transferring into this program, immediately felt like home and that is something that I was nervous about and having experienced it and realizing that that wasn’t something that I needed to worry about thus far is awesome.

It’s also had its challenges, rightly so, I was coming into a new program, but they were coming into a new coach which, having an unfamiliar face in a situation where you only have so much time to prepare, it’s going to have its challenges.

However, I think that’s been sort of the fun of it, we’ve started to establish connections, we’ve started to establish what we really want this program to be. We’re on to something special and I have a feeling it’s going to start reflecting into our gameplay.

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