Division of Physical Therapy
Department of Health Sciences
3032 Bondurant Hall, CB# 7135
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7135
Dr. Eckard completed his doctor of physical therapy degree through the US Army-Baylor University Doctoral Program in Physical Therapy in 2009 and served on active duty in the US Army for six years as a physical therapist. Dr. Eckard treated civilians and service members in inpatient and outpatient settings at Fort Sam Houston, TX, Fort Lewis, WA, Vicenza, Italy, and at contingency operating bases in Iraq and Kosovo. He transitioned out of the military in 2015 and enrolled in the HMSC PhD program at UNC. He spent the first six years of his academic career at Western Carolina University, where he was a member of the faculty and assistant department head in the Department of Physical Therapy. In July of 2024, he entered his new role as the Director of the Division of Physical Therapy in the Department of Health Sciences at UNC.
Education
- PhD, Human Movement Science, UNC Chapel Hill
- DPT, US Army-Baylor Doctoral Program in Physical Therapy
- BS, Kinesiology, James Madison University
Research/Scholarly Interests
My research seeks to identify key risk factors for lower extremity injuries in military training populations and develop portable, automated screening systems that can scale to meet the needs of the military. Identifying individuals at elevated risk for training injuries will allow the development of risk mitigation strategies targeting several types of modifiable risk factors including, but not limited to, movement quality (the extent to which common movements such as running and jumping optimize loading on specific structures) and training load (the cumulative effects of physical training efforts over time).
