Director's Message Fall 2023
By School Director, Paula Rushton
From Left: Senior Instructor, Karen Landry | Director, Paula Rushton | Associate Professor, Shanon Phelan - Photo by Bruce Bottomley
Welcome to our fall 2023 newsletter! I would like to wish everyone a Happy Occupational Therapy Month! What a wonderful time to celebrate and promote our profession! We dedicate this issue of our newsletter to highlighting the achievements of our students, faculty, staff and OT community.
Celebrating and Supporting our Students
I would like to start by congratulating our School of Occupational Therapy, Class of 2025! Earlier this month we watched with great pride as our graduates crossed the stage on convocation day, including the first two graduates of our MSc - Occupational Science program - Colleen Diggins and Catherine Rose Talastas. We wish all our graduates the best and look forward to seeing and hearing about all your wonderful accomplishments as occupational therapists. I hope you’ll take a moment to read “Their Passion -Their Journey” with MSc(OT) Valedictorian, Kelly Stoddard and MSc(OS) graduate, Catherine Rose Talastas. Congratulations also goes out to the 21 students who completed their Certificate in Disability Management this fall – I have no doubt your learning will be put to valuable use.
In September, we welcomed our newest cohort of students (Class of 2025) and welcomed back our Class of 2024. Our Welcome/Welcome Back Ceremony provided the opportunity to celebrate students by presenting scholarships and awards to both cohorts and welcome our newest cohort into the profession through our pinning ceremony.
The School is pleased that our School Mentors will again be on hand to provide another year of valuable support. Thank you Chris McWillam, Tara Pride, Stephanie Bizzeth, and Jaime Blenus, for being available to students in our programs and providing them with the opportunity to connect with someone with shared experiences and perspectives.
Did you know that our students have published articles in Canadian Association of Occupational Therapy's publication, OT Now? I encourage you to check out Advocating for Neurodivergent-affirming Spaces with Lived Experience by Kayla Warren and Our Dual Lens: Valuing Service-Using Occupational Therapists by Meredith Brison-Brown & Armita Amiri. And I’d be amiss if I didn’t direct you toward the In Conversation article with Certificate in Disability Management advocate and Manager of Health Services at Jazz Aviation, Michael MacDonald as he talks with Kristin Harold about creating better opportunities for employees with disabilities.
Celebrating and Supporting our Faculty and Staff
As we eagerly anticipate the implementation of our re-designed MScOT curriculum, which is scheduled to launch in September 2024, I would like to thank the faculty members who continue to invest their time and expertise in the re-design process while simultaneously continuing their scholarly work. And what a busy scholarly work schedules our School faculty researchers have had. We congratulate Brenda Beagan on receiving the CAOT Golden Quill Award, shared with Elizabeth Pooley, for their article entitled The Concept of Oppression and Occupational Therapy: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis, and Heidi Lauckner on being awarded the Queen’s University School of Rehabilitation Therapy Distinguished Alumni Award.
Faculty members have also been busy securing research grants, including a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (Shanon Phelan) and an Engage Nova Scotia Community Engaged Research Grant (Grace Warner). Add to that conference presentations (e.g., CAOT, Occupational Science Europe, Nordic Network on Disability Research, North American Refugee Health Conference, International Spinal Cord Society Annual Scientific Meeting) and events (e.g., NSSOT AGM), as well as leading international trainings in other countries (e.g., Ukraine and Italy). See the Research Highlights segment if this issue for a few of presentation and publication highlights.
This year’s annual Kelly Bang Lectureship was presented recently by our own School instructor, Amira Tawashy. We congratulate Amira on a beautifully delivered lecture about wheelchair service provision in low-resourced settings. The way in which she shared her experiences, often in extremely challenging and sometimes unsafe conditions, was light-hearted yet demonstrated the importance of this subject matter. Her video presentation is available here for those who were unable to tune in in real-time.
To keep a School of Occupational Therapy running smoothly, whether it be admitting or graduating students, promoting the achievements of our faculty, or providing engaging events like the Kelly Bang Lectureship, it takes a dedicated team of staff working together. It takes the type of leadership style possessed by School Administrative Manager, Mike Crawford as recognized by Dalhousie’s Faculty of Health, in the bestowment of the well-deserved Excellence in Leadership Award.
Celebrating and Supporting our OT Community
Our amazing OT community continues to support our profession in so many important ways. I would like to congratulate the Nova Scotia Society of Occcupational Therapists (NSSOT) for hosting the first OT Atlantic Conference in 10 years! From what I’ve heard, School faculty and students in attendance considered the conference to be a resounding success!
A big shout out goes out to all the occupational therapist preceptors who have agreed to take students for our 6111 placements – all 66 placements were secured in record time this year! Thank you for this precious collaboration to educate our future colleagues! Thank you also to Patti Moores who represented our School at the Memorial University Career Fair. This promotion of our School and our profession is so valued! The latest School fieldwork news and opportunities can be found in the Fieldwork Update segment of this newsletter issue.
And in more news, I’d like to share that the Nova Scotia OT Collective has been reignited! This committee provides a forum to share information relevant to the profession, discuss professional issues, and identify and collaborate on shared initiatives. Thank you to the representatives who joined from COTNS, NSSOT, Nova Scotia Health, IWK, NSCC, and CAOT. More to come on how this committee will move forward in our next communication!
Until then, enjoy reading the various articles in this Occupation Matters Newsletter!