EAST GREENWICH, R.I. — It seems emblematic of New England Institute of Technology’s expanding student enrollment and health-care curriculum that the school’s first doctoral program, debuting this fall, should be in the field of occupational therapy — itself a burgeoning field as the general population ages and pediatric needs rise.
“When you think about the issues of lifespan, we work with people from womb to tomb,” said Carol A. Doehler, department chair and professor for occupational therapy programs at NEIT, and the driving force behind the new effort.
NEIT already offers associate’s and master’s degrees in occupational therapy, but graduates of those programs have been “literally begging us to start a doctoral program,” Doehler told The Providence Journal. Other universities offer them, Doehler said, and two years ago, she began leading the effort for a homegrown one.
The post-professional occupational therapy doctorate, as NEIT’s new program is formally known, is designed for occupational therapists already employed in the field. That makes it distinct from research-specific doctoral programs, Doehler said, which require a dissertation. Still, in addition to taking such courses as “Wellness, Participation and Health Promotion,” enrollees will be required to complete original work.
These “capstone projects,” as Doehler describes them, will stress innovation and entrepreneurship, with benefit to not only the student but those they serve.
“They will allow these people who are practicing therapists to focus on something uniquely important to them in their field,” Doehler said. “What do they want to change? What do they want to innovate? Maybe they’re in a private practice and they feel they’ve got an idea of something that’s different, that can work with a particular population and really make a change.”
Or, said Doehler, “it could be someone who’s practicing in a hospital and they’d like to see better evidence of how they help people with neurological impairment like a stroke or a head injury. What is current? ‘Are we doing the best care?’”
And depending on the student, the project could be a new approach that would help keep older people living at home, or help children on the autism spectrum lead richer lives.