Terrance Tarver - Director of Athletics Mental Health and Performance - Staff Directory

Staff Directory

Terrance Tarver

Title:
Director of Athletics Mental Health and Performance

Terrance Tarver was named Florida Atlantic’s Director of Athletics Mental Health and Performance in August of 2025. Tarver, a doctoral candidate, came to Paradise one year earlier to provide therapeutic services for the University’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) office as a pre-doctoral intern.

While working on his Ph.D., Tarver served in various practicum settings including one year (August 2023 through May 2024) with the University of Tennessee’s Psychological Clinic providing therapeutic interventions, cognitive evaluations as well as integrated reports for clients. He also engaged with both individual and group supervision as well as weekly team meetings. He also completed a one-year practicum (August 2022 through July 2023) with Cherokee Health Systems in Alcoa, TN where he performed similar duties and collaborated with both clients and medical professionals on planned treatment. Tarver has garnered a plethora of experience within the collegiate counseling setting with practicums at both the University of Tennessee’s Student Counseling Center (August 2020 through May 2021) and Pellissippi State Community College’s Counseling Services.

Additionally, Tarver served as a mental performance coach (September 2022 through July 2024) for Lucas Lepri’s Brazilian Jiu Jitsu athletes, where he assisted in working through mental performance concerns such as pre-performance anxiety, motivation, attentional focus as well as rehabilitation from injury. This position followed Tarver’s completion of a semester-long internship with Lepri’s athletes to complete requirements for his M.S. in Kinesiology with a Sport and Exercise Psychology concentration from Georgia Southern University. While working on his M.S. he was simultaneously working on a Master of Arts in psychology from the University of Tennessee, completing both in 2021.
Tarver began his chosen field in 2013 as a direct service staff member at A Bundle of Care and later served as an Intensive Case Manager at New Horizons in 2016, both in Columbus, Georgia.

He has both published and presented research at various points within his career and is currently working on his proposed dissertation which focuses on two purposes. The first being to analyze the moderating influence that an athlete’s socioeconomic status may have on the relationship between the satisfaction/frustration of that athlete’s basic psychological needs and the type of motivation that athlete has to continue play in their sport. The second purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of SES on student-athletes’ perceptions of NIL.
Tarver belongs to the Association for Applied Sports Psychology (AASP) and the American Psychological Association (APA).
He has volunteered as a community coach for Shaw High School in Columbus, Georgia where he trained and coached football. He served in a similar role at Jordan High School in Columbus, GA as well.

Personal
Education: Graduated Magna Cuma Laude with a degree in Psychology from Columbus State in May of 2016; with a M.A. degree in Psychology from Tennessee in December of 2021 and from Georgia Southern in December of 2021 with a M.S in Kinesiology with a Sport and Exercise Psychology concentration. He is presently working towards his doctorate in counseling in psychology from Tennessee with a projected graduation in Fall 2025.