Dr. Kae McCarty (she/her/they) began her tenure as an Assistant Professor at the Public Health Program at the Muskie School of Public Service in Fall of 2025. We have already greatly benefited from their contributions to teaching, program leadership, student mentoring, and shared governance. Dr. McCarty’s research centers highly applied health equity initiatives, particularly alongside the Disabled community. With her degree in kinesiology, she has experience working in rehabilitation, health education programming, biomechanics, policy, coaching, and personal training. Their greatest interest is disability justice, specifically related to adaptive sports and liberatory movement. She is passionate about how disability paradigms intersect with health and fitness and advocating for accessibility and belonging therein.
Prior to the appointment at USM, Dr. McCarty was a Health Policy Research Scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a scholar of the Multi-Institution Mentorship Consortium through the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs. Kae was on Team USA for rink hockey and played and coached roller derby for 14 years under the pseudonym Samwise Banshee. Kae has lots of special interests, like learning new sports, comic books, inclusive teaching practices, and making faces at cute dogs.
One of the things we have noticed in Dr. McCarty’s approach to teaching and mentoring is how she brings fresh approaches and openness to innovation, both inside and outside of the classroom. In their first semester teaching our undergraduate capstone course, Professional Development for Public Health Careers (BPH 498), they are working with Shelley Coull, the director of USM Health Services to incorporate campus service-learning activities into the class. For example, as an assignment, students in the spring class will participate at Health Services’ annual Health and Wellness Fair on campus. She is also setting up a class group project creating a zine (a self-published and handmade magazine). For the class zine, students develop and creatively express content supporting public health program development. Outside of the classroom, Dr. McCarty has submitted an ambitious and creative proposal to develop a “Bad Sports” program on campus, mirroring the Bad Art Wednesday program by Women and Gender Studies. The idea behind “Bad Sports” is to make sport, movement, and physical activity welcoming and fun for all. Dr. McCarty’s concept is a shift away from competition by focusing on creating accessible, emergent spaces to engage in sports. Dr. McCarty has also initiated development of the Public Health Program’s Strategic Vision exercise, helping to foster a clear and meaningful vision for Public Health that will contribute to Muskie’s Strategic Vision and that of USM. We are delighted to see how she is diving
right in (to borrow a sports metaphor). Dr. McCarty uses her expertise in kinesiology, program planning, disability justice, and creating inclusive spaces to foster the best opportunities for learning and personal growth for our treasured students.