Farrell Frankel oversees the nutritional needs for West Virginia University’s football student-athletes as the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics’ director of sports nutrition.
At WVU, she provides individual and team nutritional counseling and education to enhance the student-athletes’ performance. She oversees the assessment and analysis of dietary practices, body composition, energy balance and that proper hydration protocols are completed for each student-athlete. She also will serve as a liaison for the football program regarding meal schedules, special events and menu execution for pregame and postgame, as well as fueling for in-game and halftime periods.
Frankel began her current role in October 2019 after spending the past three years as the assistant director of sports nutrition at Penn State. She also was a course instructor in the University’s Department of Nutritional Sciences.
Her responsibilities included serving as a registered dietitian for all 31 intercollegiate teams, managing 11 fuel stations across campus and creating menus and facilitated meals for daily training tables as well as pre and post competition meals.
She also performed bod pods for each athletes four times a year, provided individual counseling for athletes in areas of sports performance and developed protocols surrounding hydration testing, body composition analysis and eating disorders. She served on a task force aimed to provide mental health resources for student-athletes.
Frankel holds memberships from Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitians Association, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the Massachusetts Dietetics Association, the Jewish Member Interest Group and SCAN; holds certifications from HAACP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) and ServSafe (food handler) and is an ACE certified personal trainer and holds licenses in CPR, AED and First Aid. She also served on the Massachusetts Dietetics Association Nutrition Convention and Exposition Speaker Committee and was a nutrition liaison member for Simmons College.
Prior to PSU, she was a sports nutrition intern at Harvard in 2014, before working for Aramark at the Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory, first as its wellness coordinator (2014-15) and then its manager of nutrition (2015-16).
She also spent time as a registered dietitian for Leap Fitness in Boston (2016), a sports nutrition intern (RD) at Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition in Newton, Massachusetts (2013), a personal trainer at Equinox Fitness (2012-13), a Therapeutic Mentor at Arbour Counseling Services in Allston, Massachusetts (2010-12) and as a fitness coach at the Boot Camp of the Rockies in Denver (2009-10).
Frankel has co-authored numerous articles on nutrition for online and printed health and food science journals and has been a national speaker several times at nutritional conventions and symposiums.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from The Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and her master’s degree in nutrition and health promotion with a certification in sports nutrition, didactic program in dietetics from Simmons College in Boston and served a Dietetic Internship at Simmons.
