Resiliency drives active-duty researcher
The challenges U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Alison Cruise has overcome inspire her doctoral studies at Carolina.
Alison Cruise had a typical college experience at Appalachian State University until she was a junior. That’s when, watching live TV coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she decided to devote her life to service.
She talked to a U.S. Air Force recruiter, specifying that she wanted to be active and outdoors. The recruiter recommended aircraft maintenance. “Aircraft maintenance is a little bit of a rough-and-tumble world, but I loved it,” Cruise said.
But near the end of her first contract in 2006, she didn’t know if she’d reenlist. She is a gay woman, and it was the era of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
“It felt like an integrity issue to be me in my private life and then come to work and pretend that part of me didn’t exist,” she said.
Her mentor, Maurice “Mo” Lee, understood. But he would not let her leave without a plan. “You’re going to finish school,” he told her. “And I will help you write your package to officer training school, so you can come back to the military as an officer.”
Lee’s support spurred a new resolve in Cruise. “All right, let’s do that,” she said.
A different path
After earning her degree in exercise science at UNC Charlotte and deploying multiple times, she returned to active duty. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was officially repealed. She met her future wife, Megan, and welcomed her first baby, a girl, Shiloh. In 2019, she was promoted to major.
After recovering from a double mastectomy in 2020, Cruise was selected for squadron command, working with cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
There, she was reminded of the pressure cadets face and her own days in basic training. Inspired by her cadets’ creativity, energy and determination, she wanted to support them further.
“That’s where my research interests come in,” she said. Cruise applied for a program through the U.S. Air Force that would allow her to earn her doctorate while remaining active duty.
Because she thinks of military personnel as “tactical athletes,” she looked at schools that studied psychology and sports together. Carolina’s human movement science curriculum, a cooperative effort between the UNC School of Medicine and the exercise and sport science department in the College of Arts and Sciences, checked every box.
Cruise was drawn to the research of Shelby Baez, assistant professor of exercise and sport science, who studies the psychosocial factors on health outcomes after sport-related injury.
“This is the person who I’m going to learn from,” Cruise thought while reading Baez’s research. She planned to use Baez’s research into stress responses as the foundation of her research into the psychological stress faced by young cadets — and how to mitigate it.
Supporting future leaders
Cruise’s research focuses broadly on readiness and retention, particularly the role of cognitive appraisal — what helps people accurately weigh their capabilities against their fear to decide if something is an exciting challenge or a disheartening threat.
“If you look at something as a challenge, you’re much more regulated to go after that challenge. If you look at it as a threat, you are in ‘fight or flight,’” said Cruise.
When she completes her doctorate, she will return to the U.S. Air Force Academy to apply what she learns as a professor in the athletics department.
“Sometimes, when I think about where I am now and how, in part, I maybe never should have been able to get here, it feels a little emotional,” said Cruise. “When I have been given opportunities, I have wasted nothing.” `
