Pacific Index

Graphic Design professor scores top marks at recent national bodybuilding competition

During recovery from a traumatic brain injury, Miranda Pollock stumbled on what would not only be a sustained hobby, but a relentless passion. From Duluth, Minn., Pollock is a new graphic design professor at Pacific University. In her short time here, she has already used her expertise to completely overhaul Pacific’s graphic design major.

Pollock went to school in Duluth, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio arts and her Master of Arts in graphic design. Pollock worked at many universities throughout the Midwest, including many four-year public and private schools and a few community colleges. When Pollock moved to the Forest Grove area, she received a job offer from Pacific University and became the newest addition to our media arts department just last year.

Following a severe flip-and-roll car accident in 2012 in which she was a passenger, Pollock had to relearn to walk and talk. Pollock received two years of speech therapy, a year of physical therapy, cognitive therapy, and vision therapy after suffering from traumatic brain injuries, complex PTSD, and loss of limb control. 

Once she regained enough cognitive function, Pollock embarked on a journey to regain her strength. Starting with five-pound dumbbells, she discovered how it felt to grow stronger, and she fell in love. “Lifting weights was not part of my therapy, but was my own method of self-healing, garnering strength to help with my mental and emotional health and recovery,” she said.

Over the next few years, Pollock would get stronger, training more and more often. Still, it wasn’t until she acquired a new teaching job at a university with a high-quality weight room that she truly developed a passion for bodybuilding. 

Pollock attended her first bodybuilding show in 2019. She took a few years off during the Coronavirus lockdown to finish her PhD in psychology, and then returned to the stage in 2022. Throughout the years since, Pollock has competed regularly honing her physique while getting increasingly greater results in competition. All her rigorous training came to fruition when last November, Pollock placed first in her height and age class and second overall at a regional competition in Auburn, Washington. Although it was an incredible accomplishment, it wasn’t the last rung on Pollock’s ladder of domination; winning this regional competition had qualified her to attend and compete in the NPC (National Physique Committee) North American Championships. This is the largest amateur bodybuilding competition in the continental US, with hundreds of competitors, and the largest one Pollock has taken part in. 

This being her first national show, Pollock didn’t know what to expect. “Going into it, because I didn’t know what I was going to be seeing, I didn’t know the quality of the athletes: their muscle maturity and everything. I was hoping for a top five finish and first callout, but no expectations because you don’t know who’s going to show up. It’s really about me seeing that I’m better than I was last time I competed.” Pollock shares. Wishes coming true, Pollock placed fourth and sixth in the 50-plus and 45-plus master divisions, respectively. Pollock was also a part of the first callouts: When there is a large number of competitors, and the judges call up a select few to judge that they deem to have the best physiques, a significant compliment and accomplishment. 

Pollock takes great pride in teaching and bodybuilding. She carries the creative and informative side of teaching into the gym and transmutes the methodical, practical science of bodybuilding into her teaching and scheduling in her everyday life. “I think it’s very important, as people, to have activities that we’re passionate about that can help us in other places. It’s important for us to have other interests because they help us as creatives and as people who design.”