Students perform balance and coordination exercises with a client in the pediatric clinic.
Ithaca received the rare honor of being accredited by the American Occupational Therapy Association's accreditation council on its first try (and has been reaccredited since). Highlights of our program include an assistive technology lab and an activities-of-daily-living area containing a real kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and laundry space. There you experience firsthand the difficulty your clients may have negotiating the demands of daily tasks.
You'll have the chance to collaborate with students from our physical therapy, therapeutic recreation, gerontology, and speech-language pathology and audiology departments; that collaboration may occur in research projects, in our on-campus PT and OT clinic, or at the nearby Center for Life Skills, designed to help patients with chronic neurological problems. It's the same way you'll work once you have your license, pooling expertise and designing the best program for each client.
You'll take courses at our facility in Rochester, New York, at the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School and at the University of Rochester Medical Center during the summer immediately following your junior year. Whether on the Ithaca or the Rochester campus, you'll find our enthusiastic faculty members are eager to mentor you. Our extensive fieldwork requirement offers you invaluable real-life experience, and you can choose from hundreds of national and international sites. Those clinical experiences occur during the summers preceding and following your year of graduate studies.
The OT program at Ithaca provides excellent preparation for the national certification exam. After passing, you'll be a registered occupational therapist. Better still, you’ll be a flexible, creative problem-solver who can work in a wide variety of places, including clinics, schools, and homes. In the end, you'll have not only learned practical skills but also gained a holistic view of the human experience.