Message from the Director of the OT Program

Welcome to Occupational Therapy at Dominican University New York.

If becoming an occupational therapist feels like the right next step for you, but graduate school has to fit into an already full life, you may find something refreshingly different here.

For more than 40 years, our program has educated students who were also working, raising families, caring for others, changing careers, and contributing to their communities. We understand that your responsibilities do not simply disappear when you decide to pursue a graduate degree.

That understanding has shaped our program from the beginning.

Two Ways to Learn. One Excellent Education.

Our students can complete the academic portion of the program through either our Weekend format, which meets on campus every second or third weekend, or our one-weekday-per-week format.

Both follow the same accredited curriculum. Both are taught by the same faculty. Both prepare students for the same profession.

The difference is in how the learning is scheduled.

Our goal is not to make graduate school easy. Becoming an occupational therapist requires serious work, strong clinical reasoning, hands-on skill, self-discipline, and the ability to keep going and growing when something is difficult.

Our goal is to make an excellent occupational therapy education more possible for people whose lives do not fit neatly into a traditional full-time weekday graduate school schedule.

When you are on campus, you will be actively learning; practicing skills, working through cases, solving clinical problems, collaborating with classmates, and applying what you have studied between class sessions. The format asks you to become an increasingly independent and thoughtful learner, while still giving you the benefit of learning face-to-face with faculty and classmates.

And yes, it requires planning.

Your two Level II fieldwork experiences later in the program are full-time clinical experiences. Students who work or have significant family responsibilities need to prepare for that stage well in advance.

You will not be the first person here to figure out how to make it all work.

For more than four decades, our students have been doing exactly that.

A Place Where You Will Be Known

Our cohorts are intentionally small.

Your faculty will know your name. You will get to know your classmates well. You will learn together, challenge one another, help one another, and often develop professional relationships that continue long after graduation.

Our faculty bring more than 150 combined years of clinical practice to the classroom, along with active involvement in scholarship and the profession. But what matters most to us is what that experience allows us to give you: the opportunity to learn not only what occupational therapists do, but how experienced practitioners think, adapt, communicate, problem-solve, and make decisions when real life is considerably messier than a textbook example.

Your classmates will bring another kind of expertise: their own lives.

You may learn alongside COTAs ready to advance their careers, recent college graduates, career changers, parents, caregivers, and students from communities, cultures, faith traditions, and life experiences very different from your own.

We see that diversity as a strength.

Occupational therapists work with people whose experiences, priorities, abilities, identities, and circumstances may differ greatly from ours. Learning to listen, understand another person’s perspective, question our assumptions, and work respectfully across differences is part of becoming an excellent occupational therapist.

That learning begins here.

Preparing You for More Than Your First Job

Our goal goes beyond helping you earn a degree.

We want you to leave Dominican prepared to become an engaged, competent, compassionate, ethical, and evidence-informed occupational therapist and leader; someone who listens carefully, reasons thoughtfully, uses evidence wisely, respects the dignity and priorities of every person, and is willing to act when people encounter barriers to participating fully in the lives they want to live.

That commitment to access, belonging, and occupational justice has long been part of who we are.

Graduates of the program are eligible to sit for the NBCOT certification examination, leading to the OTR credential and eligibility for state licensure. We publish our certification examination and graduation outcomes openly, and I encourage you to review them as you compare programs and decide where you will be best able to learn and succeed.

Come Get to Know Us

Choosing an occupational therapy program is an important decision, and I hope you will ask more than which program is closest or which schedule looks easiest.

• Ask what it will feel like to learn there.
• Ask whether faculty will know you.
• Ask how students are supported when they struggle and challenged when they are ready to grow.
• Ask whether the program will prepare you not simply to pass an examination, but to become the kind of occupational therapist you would want to care for someone you love.

And absolutely ask whether the program can realistically work with your life.

Come to an information session. Visit us. Talk with our students and faculty. Bring your questions, including the difficult ones.

You deserve honest answers.

I hope you will discover that Dominican is a place where you can bring the life experience you already have, develop abilities you have not yet imagined, and grow into the occupational therapist you hope to become.

I look forward to meeting you and, one day, welcoming you into the profession as a colleague.

Pamela Story, OTD, OTR/L, CPAM, CLIPP™
Program Director, Graduate Occupational Therapy Program
Dominican University New York