Task Force on Programmatic Strategies for Ensuring Student Success

Purpose 

• Help prospective students develop a sense of agency to advance their professional opportunities as their career develops.
• Identify programmatic solutions to challenges related to mental health and wellbeing, financial literacy and sustainability, social issues, changes in expectations around how education is taught/received, climate change, etc.
• Help students prepare for the clinical experiences both before and during their clinical rotation.
• Help students learn how to study and prepare for exams with examples of time management strategies.
• Recommend ways to bring mentors in monthly/weekly to talk to students and provide information to shape their understanding of the real experiences after graduation.
• Explore concepts of 2-staged licensure (earn an income before you graduate) to help students learn how to pay down their loan by pursuing experiences that build knowledge while in school and pay back for it.
• Provide suggestions/resources for reducing burn-out. Identify ways to help them expand on their sense of altruism and professional development throughout the program.
• Develop strategies to ensure faculty are teaching with contemporary expertise both from a clinical context and educational pedagogy.

Objectives

To achieve its purpose, the Task Force will:

• Identify what is working on campuses and in clinical settings that bring about a greater level of satisfaction.
• Understand the holes or key drivers in physical therapy graduate education that prevent or inhibit student success.
• Engage with programs to learn where the typical stress points are for students in each year of their experience. Are these different relative to type of institution, size of institution, or location?
• What key solutions work, what needs to be further researched, how do we continue to evolve our understanding and management of student success for the future?
• The task force is committed to ensuring that its work will be rooted in principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. By integrating DEI considerations into our work, we aim to address systemic disparities, remove barriers, and foster an environment where all individuals, regardless of their background, have equal access to opportunities and representation within the field of physical therapy.

Outcomes

By following the above objectives, and any others identified, this Task Force will create resources for use by all institutions, which shall include:

• Develop a roadmap on what faculty can do in various scenarios to support students and link to the related resources.
• Identify a series of roadmaps with links to resources for each outlining recommendations for each of the following:
  • what a future student should do prior to entering DPT school and expect in their first and subsequent years.
  • how to engage alumni as mentors in various areas in which they are struggling (possibly develop a mentor program).
  • how best to manage stressful points (and identify the most common stress points).
  • how to maximize the potential for their clinical placement and things to consider.
  • how to prepare for the NPTE and other exams along the way.
  • identify options like the observation hours that students can use to take advantage of understanding PT.
  • resources on student debt management and financial literacy.
• Task force should be mindful of using existing resources to avoid populating a website with numerous links. The focus here should be on helping students navigate the resources using a decision-tree model or some other type of roadmap of what resource to utilize, when and why.

Composition

The Task Force shall not exceed 10 people. The Task Force will seek to have a composition of people with the following experiences:

• Student services professionals.
• Mental health professionals who spend time dealing with this at a high level, not just faculty.
• Professionals with a masters in business and/or financial wellness understanding.
• Learning specialists, like educational consultant or learning disabilities.
• Equal representation of academicians and clinicians.
• Representation from diverse geographic and practice settings.

The Chair’s primary responsibility will be to ensure the Task Force is meeting its charge as outlined above and within the timeline defined.  The Chair will meet quarterly with the Institute Chair and Vice Chair, providing written progress reports on the work of the Task Force.

The Vice Chair will serve as the secretary of the Task Force whose responsibilities include polling for meetings, developing the agenda with the Chair, circulating minutes to Task Force members, staff and the Institute Chair and Vice Chair, and delivering all documents and work products to ACAPT for archiving.

• To ensure diverse engagement and equitable opportunities, no person serving on the Task Force may be serving on another of ACAPT’s volunteer leadership groups unless permission is sought and granted in advance by the Board of Directors.
• The Task Forces are accountable to their Institute Chair and Vice Chair, who are accountable to the ACAPT Board of Directors.
• All who are appointed to the Task Force will receive a letter acknowledging their appointment that may support promotion and/or tenure.

Timeline 

• Task force members will meet or communicate at least monthly via conference calls and emails to review tasks completed and next steps to meet project milestones. 
• Task force members may meet at CSM in person or virtually.  The budget will determine if/what resources are available to support such a meeting.
• The Institute Chair and Vice Chair will conduct a virtual meeting quarterly with all task force chairs and vice chairs within that Institute to evaluate progress on their charge and to address any barriers or potential changes needed to their charge in response to changes in the profession.
• The Task Force will submit information to the Institute Chair and Vice Chair that may reflect their activity during the year and reported in ACAPT’s annual report, which is created in August and disseminated to members electronically in September.
• Task forces should be prepared to discuss their activity with ACAPT members at the Physical Therapy Education Leadership Conference (ELC) during a networking event created for the Institute.
• Task forces are expected to conclude their work by December of the calendar year in which they were created. 
• If a task force needs more time than the calendar year for which they were created, the Chair of the task force will notify the Institute Chair.  Together, they will evaluate what is causing the delay, evaluate if there are new circumstances informing the work not previously identified, and if there are additional resources needed.  If the need for additional time is determined necessary by the Institute Chair, they will submit a request to the Board for an extension, to include how that may impact resources.  The Board will make an assessment based on the charge, needed outcomes, and resources available and either extend the work for a limited time, expand the size of the task force to increase productivity to meet the charge and timeline, or disband the task force.
• The final work product(s) will reside on ACAPT’s website and shall be an ACAPT product.

Members

Chair: Margaret Wicinski Reynolds

Vice Chair: Angel Holland

• Michael Cyr, PT, DPT, NCS - Maine Strong Balance Center
• Kim Dao, PT, DPT - Tufts University
• Lori Hochman, PT, PhD - New York Institute of Technology
• Angel Holland, PT, DPT, EdD - University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
• Janna McGaugh, PT, ScD - University of Texas Medical Branch
• Karolyn Miller, PT, DPT, EdD - St. Ambrose University
• Bethany Nolan, PT, DPT, OCS - Saint Joseph's University
• Neeti Pathare, PT, PhD, Tufts University
• Margaret Wicinski Reynolds, PT, DPT, EdD - University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences
• Janet Stevenson, BS, University of Southern California