CWU nutrition program helps student find her passion

ELLENSBURG — When Leah Dambacher moved to Washington in the fall of 2020 for a dietetic internship with CWU, nothing felt certain. She wasn’t sure how to apply for her undergraduate degree, she didn’t know anyone in Ellensburg, and the world was in the midst of a pandemic.

But Dambacher persevered, and now — less than three years after taking an unfamiliar leap — she’s graduating with a master’s degree in human nutrition and a clear direction of where she wants to take her career.

“I didn’t know a single person when I moved here, and it was really hard to make connections,” said Dambacher, a native of Sonora, Calif., who earned her bachelor’s degree in applied nutrition at California State Polytechnic University in 2019. “It wasn’t always easy, but I feel like I came out of it pretty well.”

When you look at her full body of work, Dambacher has managed to do even better than that; she has excelled.

As part of her year-long internship, she worked in professional settings with Columbia Valley Community Health, Confluence Health, the University of Oregon, and the Ellensburg School District. Those experiences gave her the confidence she needed to apply for graduate school.

After getting to know a number of CWU faculty members — including professor David Gee and assistant professors Dana Ogan and Kelly Pritchett — she decided that the master’s program at Central would be the logical next step.

“Dana was our internship director, so it was an easy transition,” Dambacher said. “I also got to meet a number of other professors, including Kelly Pritchett, who is heavily into sports nutrition — the field I want to get into. We talked about me getting involved in some of her research, and that’s when I knew I wanted to go to Central.”

Since enrolling in the CWU master’s program in the fall of 2021, Dambacher has made the most of her opportunities. Over the past year, she has served as a graduate teaching assistant, contributed to industry-relevant research, and earned national recognition for a project she completed for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

The focus of her research with Pritchett has been on low energy availability, or LEA, in female athletes. LEA means there is not enough energy in an athlete’s body — specifically, runners — to support a high amount of training volume.

The condition has been shown to affect every system in the body, leading to slowed metabolism, disordered eating, lack of menstruation, bone injuries, stress fractures and other physiological ailments.

“Relative energy deficiency is really prevalent in female runners, and this research has really opened my eyes to those issues,” Dambacher said. “This work has been a big part of my career development, and I have realized this is what I want to focus on so I can help female athletes and educate them about the effects of LEA.”

As part of her research at CWU, Dambacher developed an online presentation for the AND national conference this spring, earning the Poster Presentation Award from the Sports and Human Performance Nutrition practice group.

The virtual research poster series focused on the risk of LEA, disordered eating, and menstrual dysfunction between Division I, II, and III female runners.

“I wanted to see if there was a difference in the prevalence of LEA and disordered eating based on different training loads,” she said. “But what I found was that there are no differences between the three divisions. It turns out that over half of these female athletes were at risk of LEA and disordered eating.”

Dambacher hopes to use the knowledge and research experience she has gained at CWU to land a position as a sports dietitian or nutrition assistant for a college athletic program. She has already applied for jobs in Washington, Colorado, and California, but she’s casting a wide net.

“I’m open to going anywhere,” she said.

That’s the same mindset Dambacher had when she moved to Washington in the fall of 2020 for her internship. Little did she know how well that experience would set her up for the next step in her career. Now, she is ready to take her work to the next level.

“I definitely feel ready to take on whatever job comes my way,” Dambacher said. “CWU has given me everything I could have asked for in a graduate program, and I am excited to start my career and begin helping people.”