Alumni Profile: Matthew Quinn '14 (Kinesiology)

Matt Quinn was nominated by Judi Labranche. We connected with Matt to find out what he pursued as a post-graduate degree and how being a Kinesiology major set him up for success.

The interest in Kinesiology started long before I knew what the field was called. As a kid I was fascinated by homologous structures across species — the same set of bones in a bat's wing and a human hand, rearranged for entirely different purposes. Kinesiology turned out to be the discipline that takes that curiosity seriously and puts real mechanics behind it.

UMass gave me a place to keep playing football and a department strong enough to build a scientific foundation at the same time. Being able to do both, at that level, in one place, is not something every school offers.

I'm an orthopedic surgeon. I completed medical school and orthopedic surgery residency at Brown University followed by a fellowship in orthopedic trauma at Brown. I'm now in Chicago, completing a fellowship in orthopedic sports medicine at Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush.

Sports medicine work involves arthroscopic surgery of the shoulder, knee, and hip, along with sideline and training-room care for athletes. My longer-term goal is an academic practice combining sports medicine, clinical and basic science research, and team coverage for a variety of sports.

The KIN department was integral in helping me establish the foundational skills that I continue to build on today. I worked as a teaching and research assistant in the department, and those roles are where I learned what academic work actually looks like from the inside — how a question gets framed, how data gets collected honestly, and what it takes to defend a finding.

The department also put me in front of people, which mattered as much as the science. Some of that work involved body composition testing on volunteers — taking skinfold measurements with calipers on parts of the body people are often self-conscious about. Someone lets you do that because they trust you, and learning how to handle that situation professionally at 20, and how not to make a person feel exposed, was as formative as anything I learned in a classroom. It is the same skill I use in the clinic now.

I can't talk about the KIN department without mentioning Judi LaBranche and Patty Freedson who were both tremendous mentors, and I don't think I'd have ended up where I am without them. The foundation they gave me carried directly into medicine. Research has stayed central to my career ever since, beginning in medical school and continuing through residency and fellowship.

Football gave me the other half of the network. Being a student-athlete in KIN meant I was studying the science of human performance during the day and living it in the afternoon, and those teammates and coaches are still people I talk to.

I was not the strongest applicant coming out of undergrad. My grades were good, but football consumed almost all of my free time, and I had almost no clinical experience — the thing medical schools care most about. I took a gap year, applied, and didn't get a single interview.

I took a second year and kept going. I worked as a medical scribe, coached CrossFit, and shadowed orthopedic surgeons whenever I could get access. What I needed to demonstrate was not a better test score but a longitudinal commitment to medicine, and that takes actual time to accumulate. On the second cycle I got in, and I ended up at Brown, which was a better outcome than anything I could have dreamed of.

Pre-med advising was available and I used it. The O'Connors were helpful and encouraging, particularly at a point when I had reason to be discouraged. Being told that a delayed path is still a path matters more than people realize.

There are four things I suggest if you want to pursue becoming an Orthopedic Surgeon:

Know what you're signing up for. Four years of medical school, five years of residency, and one or two years of fellowship — it's a long road. I'll finish my second fellowship thirteen years after graduating from UMass. Attrition along the way is real and mostly self-selecting: people leave because the cost stops being worth it to them, which is a legitimate conclusion. Ask yourself the question honestly and early rather than discovering the answer eight years in.

Start research early and stay put. The single highest-value thing I did was attach myself to mentors and stay long enough to finish what I started. A scattered list of projects you touched briefly is worth less than two or three completed papers with one group. Depth beats breadth, and it isn't close.

Find mentorship even if there's no medical center attached to your campus. The KIN faculty were doing serious research and were willing to involve undergraduates who showed up consistently. The mentors exist; you have to go find them and then be useful enough that they keep you around.

Academic performance still functions as a gate. Orthopedics remains one of the most competitive specialties, and grades and board scores determine which doors open. That is not the whole picture, and it shouldn't be, but the sooner you accept that it matters, the more options you will have later.