Month: June 2024

Threats’ career goal had family inspiration

Oct. 24, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Travis Threats was recently named one of the recipients of the Honors of Association from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).

Travis Threats had a clear inspiration for what he wanted to study: his brother.

Threats, who earned his master’s degree from the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in 1984, said he first observed speech therapy when he was eight years old.

“My younger brother, three years younger than me, is autistic,” Threats said. “Autism directly affects communication. Now, some people think, when they hear this, that it’s some beautiful inspirational story, and all of the speech therapists were great, and that’s why I wanted to be like them. Well, it’s the opposite. All the speech therapy in its early years was bad. The social work was bad. The teachers were bad. Even though (my brother) didn’t have any overt behavior issues, my parents would go to the doctor’s office, fill out the information, and the (pediatrician’s) nurse would come out to the waiting room, saying ‘He doesn’t see autistic children.’”

That interaction led Threats to the conclusion that “there was a need. All of my work has been with people in their actual lives because I realized there’s been a disconnect between therapists, and what goals they achieved, and what people with disabilities actual lives are like. For me, it’s a clear-cut (reason to study speech pathology).”

For his work and dedication to the profession, Threats—now professor and department chair of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at Saint Louis University—recently earned Honors of Association from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). It is the national organization’s highest honor.

Threats got his undergraduate degree at Kansas State University before coming to the University of Illinois for his master’s. At Illinois, he met a man who would have a profound effect on his career.

“I did decide I wanted to work with adults with acquired disorders,” Threats said. “And the person who taught that wasn’t a researcher: Dr. Robert Simpson. He was a very humane man, and he did talk about aphasia and strokes and all that from that broader viewpoint of what they do to people’s lives.”

Simpson, who died in 2019 at 93, was a professor of speech and hearing science at the University of Illinois and also served as director of the department’s speech and hearing clinic. He served on the facial deformity team at Carle Foundation Hospital and eventually was employed by Carle as a speech pathologist after retiring from the university.

“He wasn’t a researcher in a traditional sense,” Threats said. “But his teachings were very much a positive influence on me.”

The ASHA award Threats received recognizes exceptional contributors whose work has enhanced or altered the course of research in the field of speech, language and hearing sciences. In an association of more than 218,000 professionals, only a select number of individuals each year receive this prestigious award.

He understands its significance.

“Three of my professors at U of I have honors from the association. I do remember—as a Ph.D. student (at) Northwestern—going to the first ASHA conference and going to the awards ceremony. And these were the people who wrote the books that I was studying from. These were some of my alums at Northwestern—three or so of those people eventually got honors, too. My own advisor got honors the year I graduated. … I certainly didn’t at the time think that I would be one of those people.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Serving the profession through mentorship

April 03, 2023 | Anna Flanagan

The Clinical Fellowship Year pairs a first-year practitioner with an experienced practitioner to ease the transition between student and independent provider of clinical services.

Theodora Papastratakos, left

When students take on their first professional position after completing their master’s degrees in speech and hearing science with a focus on speech-language pathology, they must also begin what is called a Clinical Fellowship Year, or CFY, required by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) to earn the Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech-Language Pathology (CCC-SLP). The CFY pairs a first-year practitioner with an experienced practitioner in a mentoring relationship designed to ease the transition between student and independent provider of clinical services.

Theodora Papastratakos completed her master’s degree in 2015 and her CFY during the 2015-2016 school year, her first with Aldrin Elementary School in Schaumburg.

“You dive right in, which is why you have a clinical fellowship supervisor,” she said. “It’s so different from being in graduate school and doing your clinical externships versus managing your own caseload. It’s a big leap.”

She found her own CFY experience positive, but also knew there were things she would have liked to change. During her first several years of practice at Aldrin Elementary, Theo felt she was still learning so much that she could not supervise a clinical fellowship. In the fall of 2021, the department head reached out to her to see if she’d be willing to supervise a new SLP who would be joining the school part time.

“I’d been practicing for seven years, and I think I realized that I do know a lot,” she said. “I was excited to share some of that knowledge with somebody coming into the field.”

She took the training course offered by ASHA and welcomed May 2021 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign SHS graduate Rachel Deichstetter to Aldrin Elementary as her first mentee. Some of Theo’s role involved just being available to Rachel to answer questions, walk her through district policies and procedures, and give feedback on her ideas.

“I would review her goals and the reports that she was writing and help her as needed,” Theo said. “I watched some of her therapy sessions and gave her feedback throughout the year. If she was experiencing something for the first time, I might help a little bit more. Toward the end of the year, she was practicing independently.”

Theo enjoyed assisting with Rachel’s transition from student to professional and working with someone fresh out of graduate school. “It was fun to see her gain more confidence throughout the year,” she said. “Sometimes when you’ve been practicing for a while, you get stuck in what you’re doing. Rachel brought fresh ideas and new ways of doing things.”

Theo will continue working at Aldrin Elementary while Rachel joins another school in the Schaumburg district for 2022-2023. “I’ll remain a resource for her in the future if she has questions or needs to bounce ideas off someone,” she said. She looks forward to her next opportunity to supervise a clinical fellow and mentor another budding speech-language pathologist into the profession.

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RST 180 a ‘once-in-a-lifetime-trip’

Oct. 22, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

RST 180 has a rather dry course title: Professional Applications. But for the students who take the class, it is anything but.

RST 180, which returned in 2022 after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19, is a three-credit course that concludes with a 12-day tour of recreation, sport and tourism-related destinations in Indiana, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. This year’s trip included stops in sites such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Niagara Falls, the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Olympic training site in Lake Placid, the site of Woodstock in Bethel, N.Y., the 9/11 Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., and the Ohio State Reformatory, the site of the movie “The Shawshank Redemption.”

On May 23, more than two dozen students, along with RST Clinical Associate Professor Mike Raycraft, boarded a bus and set out from the University of Illinois campus on their way east.

As much as the trip is about learning the logistics and operations of iconic RST sites, it is also an epic road trip—complete with a five-hour delay due to a bus breakdown.

“My favorite part of the trip was meeting some of the best people and friends that I have ever met,” said rising sophomore Matthew Wargo. “From the beginning, we had to hang out with each other while we waited 5-plus hours for a new bus, and those hours really helped us to bond as a group before we embarked on the bus journey.”

Rising sophomore Nicole Dudek agreed.

“My favorite part of the trip was bonding with all my classmates and making lifelong friendships,” she said. “One instance that sticks out to me is when we all went on a cruise around Glimmerglass Lake in Cooperstown [upstate New York]. We had a free day to spend however we liked, but all of us chose to spend it with each other. It was really a moment where we bonded despite being from different walks of life.”

Rising senior Olivia Butters was another student on the trip. Butters is studying business management and is minoring in RST, with an emphasis on Sports Management. Ideally, she would like to work in a collegiate athletics department in operations or facility management,and this type of trip allows her to see those operations up close.

Butters said she was especially excited to meet with Mark Thomas—the recently retired Western District Director for State Parks in New York—whose role  included oversight of Niagara Falls.

“I was very excited to hear about his experience running such a large state park,” Butters said. “He had so much knowledge and gave us such a great experience at the Falls.”

Dudek, who plans to pursue a career in outdoor recreation/tourism, was also excited to meet with Thomas, but the most important visit to her was unexpected.

“Cooperstown ended up being the site that was most significant to me, which initially came as a surprise,” she said. “Going into the trip all I knew the town for was the Baseball Hall of Fame, which I was interested in but didn’t expect to fawn over. It ended up being two of my favorite days of the trip.”

Visiting new places and spaces is fun for the students, but they also understand the importance of the trip, in terms of their futures.

“I wanted to explore what career options there were in the field, as well as network with professionals across the country,” Dudek said.

As much as the journey  provided students and future professionals with lifelong benefits—especially crucial experience that will inform their future careers—it also included something unique.

“My favorite part of the trip was meeting everyone. I got onto the bus on the first day only knowing two people in the class, and by the last day I could easily call each person on the bus a friend,” Butters said. “I couldn’t say no to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Matthew Wargo agreed.

“We all had a great time together—even now, a few weeks after the trip ended, we are already making plans to hang out with each other in the fall and later this summer,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade the friends I made on this trip for anything in the world.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Illinois part of team receiving $14.7M grant to study emerging tech for older adults

Oct. 22, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The University of Illinois is part of a consortium that has been awarded a five-year, $14.7 million grant from the National Institute on Aging (National Institutes of Health) for the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE). 

University of Illinois Professor Wendy Rogers—of the Dept. of Kinesiology and Community Health within the College of Applied Health Sciences—is the principal investigator for the Illinois site. Co-investigators include Raksha Mudar of the Dept. of Speech and Hearing Science, Dan Llano of the Dept. of Molecular & Integrative Physiology, and Avinash Gupta and RS Sreenivas, both of the Dept. of Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering.  “One of the most exciting aspects of the Illinois engagement is the breadth of our involvement, representing four departments across three colleges,” Dr. Rogers said. “Such interdisciplinarity is critical for advancement in technology designed to support older adults.”  

Weill Cornell Medicine, Florida State University, and Illinois are the lead universities on CREATE, a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary center. The research will focus on employing emerging and existing technologies to promote wellbeing, quality of life and independence for diverse populations of older adults, and to provide support for older adults with cognitive impairments.

Initially funded in 1999, the goal of CREATE is to ensure that older adults can use and realize the benefits of technology for improving daily living. Through the four previous funding cycles of CREATE, the landscape of aging and technology has changed dramatically. 

Given that age is a significant risk factor for cognitive impairments such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s Disease/Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias, CREATE V will expand its target populations to include older adults with MCI and involve three integrated cross-site projects. With a focus on enhancing cognitive health, social engagement and preventing cognitive impairment, the first study will look at how virtual reality technology can be used to foster cognitive and social engagement among aging adults. 

It will be one of the largest randomized controlled trials of virtual reality in home settings. Preliminary development and testing will be conducted at the McKechnie Family LIFE Home on the Illinois campus.

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For SHS’ Chambers, the plan is ‘an unscheduled life’

Oct. 22, 2022 | Anna Flanagan

Somebody asked Ron Chambers what he was going to do in retirement and he said, ‘Have an unscheduled life.”

Dr. Ron Chambers was one of three sons in a farming family in Texas. His mother always knew that he was the scholar in the family, in love with learning and good at it. She always knew that he would be the first in his family to go to college. He says happenstance led him to careers in audiology and academia, a “good gig” that he has enjoyed for more than three decades and from which he recently retired.

As a student at South Plains Junior College and Texas Tech University, he took a broad array of classes in many different fields, interested in everything. Eventually, the powers that be said, “You have to choose a major to continue your studies.”

“I had taken a course in speech and hearing. I liked it and the instructor encouraged me to stay in the field. So I said, ok!” Dr. Chambers recalled.

He went on to complete a master’s degree in audiology, the maximum degree required at the time for professional practice. He went into clinical practice, but knew he wasn’t finished learning yet. Dr. Chambers had every intention of pursuing a PhD, and he began his work toward a doctoral degree in audiology at Purdue University after just two years of professional practice. He had no intention of becoming a professor, however. He had become fascinated with auditory electrophysiology, which was just gaining strength as a diagnostic technique in clinical audiology. After completing his PhD, he accepted a post-doctoral position at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, joining the Cognitive Psychophysiology Lab of Dr. Emanuel Donchin, a pioneer in the field of cognitive neuroscience.

Dr. Chambers spent a year In Dr. Donchin’s lab, investigating electrophysiological measures of evoked responses in advancing age. When a faculty position opened up in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science, his mentors strongly encouraged him to apply and he said “ok” once again. Thus began Dr. Chambers’ 38-year career in SHS.

Teaching, research, service—all part of the job

Dr. Chambers pursued his interest in measuring electrophysiological brain potentials evoked by auditory stimuli throughout his nearly 40-year career. He has studied the physiologic basis of perceived pitch, the effects of aging on auditory cortical evoked potentials, and the appearance of evoked potentials from both peripheral (brainstem) and central (cortical) auditory structures in individuals with cochlear implants. He participated in some of the earliest work in this area, when cochlear implants consisted of a single electrode that stimulated just one area of the auditory nerve. He also has examined the effectiveness of steady-state auditory evoked potentials in predicting the degree and frequency of hearing loss, and the characteristics of evoked potentials elicited by a relatively new type of acoustic stimulus referred to as the chirp.

“My goal has always been better understanding of the physiologic processing of sound in individuals with normal hearing and those with hearing impairments,” he said. “These evoked brain potentials are common clinical measures now. They enable us to detect hearing difficulties in infants and have an intervention plan in place by the time they’re six months old.”

His research has involved many PhD, AuD, and master’s students and for the last 15 years, his teaching has focused on graduate students. Prior to that, Dr. Chambers also taught a variety of undergraduate classes, and he has always included undergraduates as members of his lab. Working with students will be one of the things he most misses about being a professor.

“I love interacting with students and talking with them about how we hear, the details of auditory processes, how hearing loss affects the quality of life for patients and their conversation partners, and the singular role of audiologists in serving people with hearing loss,” he said. He enjoys seeing all students learn and blossom, he says, and encourages former students to stay in touch.

Dr. Chambers contributed significantly to graduate education in SHS when the required degree for entry into audiology practice was elevated from a master’s to a professional doctorate. Dr. Chambers took charge of creating the Doctor of Audiology degree program in SHS, developing and adding to the existing curriculum courses on the electrophysiological indices of audition, advanced audiologic assessment, hearing conservation, medical audiology, and auditory processing disorders.

“We added a lot more clinical experience, and were able to add courses that went into more depth and addressed more advanced issues than we were able to in the master’s program,” he said. “When students graduate from the AuD program, they’re supposed to be ready to hang up their shingles, and they are.”

He also contributed extensively to the department as an administrator, serving as associate head, acting head, interim head, and head for 11 years. With the support of the College of Applied Health Sciences, which SHS had joined in 1991 from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dr. Chambers oversaw the growth of the tenure-track faculty as department head. It was during his leadership that the graduate program in audiology transitioned from a terminal master’s to a doctoral degree. He also is proud of spearheading an effort that added courses in American Sign Language to the undergraduate curriculum.

He believes service—to the department, the campus, and the profession—is essential to an academic career, as long as it is kept in balance with teaching and research responsibilities.

“Through these experiences, I learned more about the college, the university, and the professions of audiology and speech-language pathology as vehicles for public health,” he said, “and in the process, broadened my vision and gained greatly in self-confidence.”

Act III

“Somebody asked me what I was going to do in retirement and I said, ‘Have an unscheduled life,’” Dr. Chambers said. “I won’t have to look at a calendar every day. I’ll go with the flow again.”

He said he once read that life has three acts. Act I goes up to age 30, Act II goes through age 60. In both those acts, law of averages willing, you know that when the curtain comes down, it’s going to come back up.

“But when you get to Act III, it’s the final curtain and you never know when it’s going to happen,” he said.  “It’s time to look at other things in the world, a chance to do more reading. Maybe I’ll write a novel.”

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Freer Hall, Makeover Edition

Oct. 21, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Freer Hall underwent a makeover, but the pandemic delayed its celebration

In January 2015, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees approved campus funding for the College of Applied Health Sciences’ plan to renovate the north wing “to develop needed spaces that directly support the long-range vision for the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health and the College of Applied Health Sciences at Urbana-Champaign.”

After delays attributable to COVID-19, Freer’s renovation reached what was called “substantial completion” in November 2020. Unfortunately, the pandemic got in the way of a fancy grand re-opening, but the building is now in heavy use thanks to the full return to campus this fall.

The highlight of the renovation is the multipurpose testing and research facility that occupies the first floor of the former pool wing. Described as an “historic renovation” by Dr. Amy Woods, a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, the project significantly enhanced the department’s teaching, research, and outreach missions.

The pool building at UIUC’s historic Freer Hall was repurposed to capture much-needed space for the College of Applied Sciences. The renovation provides infrastructure for advanced testing research facilities, including modular and adaptable dry test labs and a wet lab. Newly created classrooms and offices are part of the program. Although the central feature looks like a fitness center, it is actually a first-of-its-kind, interdisciplinary research laboratory to study health, rehabilitation, and human movement.

The long-awaited completion of the renovation brought new life and purpose to one of campus’ most stately academic buildings.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Allen receives NIH grant to study and combat rise of IBD

Oct. 22, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

KCH Assistant Professor Jacob Allen got an NIH grant to study and combat rise of IBD.

In 1999, an estimated 1.8 million adults in the United States had inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), according to the Centers for Disease Control. By 2015, that number had risen to 3.1 million. Not only are incidences of IBD rising, but the costs associated with treating IBD have soared as well. According to a study published in 2019 in the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, patients with IBD incurred a greater than three-fold higher direct cost of health care on a per-annual basis, compared with non-IBD controls ($22,987 vs $6,956 per-member per-year paid claims) and more than twice the out-of-pocket costs ($2,213 vs $979 per-year reported costs).

Statistics like those above are why researchers such as Assistant Professor Jacob Allen of the Dept. of Kinesiology and Community Health in the College of Applied Health Sciences at Illinois are working to determine a way to prevent IBD and other conditions caused by mucosal dysfunction. Allen received a $3.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in July 2022 for his project titled “Role of epithelial ROS signaling in mediating psychological stress-induced mucosal dysfunction and colitis predisposition.”

In his grant application, Allen wrote, “exposure to psychosocial stressors increases the likelihood of developing IBD in genetically predisposed individuals, implicating a brain-gut axis in the IBD etiological framework.” His preliminary data “indicate(d) that the reactive-oxygen species (ROS)-generating capacity of intestinal epithelial cell (IECs) may be the most proximate causes of stress-induced dysbiosis and mucosal disruption.”

“If you look at inflammatory bowel disease rates over the past 30 to 40 years, you see an exponential rise in IBD rates, which is obviously problematic,” Allen said. “But also they’re often relapsing, remitting diseases, meaning that if you have IBD, you often will have periods of flares, symptoms, followed by periods of remission where you don’t have symptoms, which makes it kind of a unique type of disease in that way in that it’s a recurring disease. What we’re learning is that there are certain things that cause the recurrence, including diet, but also relevant for this grant, psychological stress can drive recurrence of disease flares.”

According to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, the costs associated with people missing work, treatments, and  medical costs that are indirectly associated with having IBD ranges from $30 billion to $50 billion annually.

As Allen explains, IBD consists of two major diseases in humans—Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. They’re slightly different in their etiology, he said, meaning that the symptoms are a little different and they arise at different points in the intestine. Crohn’s disease usually arises in the small intestine and moves down to the colon, whereas colitis is generally focused in on the colon, located in the distal bowel region.

“Finding the mechanisms underlying why the disease occurs and then also what causes flares and what causes recurrence is also important,” he said, “and so that’s kind of the big picture goal of why this is an important thing to study.”

In his grant application, Allen cites “an emerging line of work has established that stress-induced disruptions to the gut microbiota may be the most proximate cause of stress-induced IBD predisposition.” Researchers in Allen’s lab found that a mouse-adaptive pathogen was more effective at inducing colitis in mice colonized by a microbiota from mice exposed to a chronic social defeat stressor.

Additionally, they found that stress exacerbates chronic colitis.

“We think that essentially comes down to a disrupted communication between the microbiome and the host immune system,” he said. “And what happens is that the adaptive immune system, which recognizes certain bacteria and can attack those bacteria, is disrupted to some degree with IBD. It’s thought to be similar to (but not the same as)  classical autoimmune diseases, whereby T cells and B cells start to mistakenly attack our own cells. However, with IBD, it appears that the immune system develops abnormal inflammatory reactions to our endogenous microbiota.” What sets off this reaction, however, is not fully understood. Allen and his team hypothesize that excessive production of stress hormones may be one of the key factors underlying IBD predisposition.

Allen explains that the body and bacteria, under normal circumstances, under a healthy condition, live in homeostasis. However, when people experience high levels of psychological stress, Allen said, that communication pathways get shut down. That can lead to mucosal dysfunction, through which diseases such IBD can occur, as well as food allergies and other gut-related conditions.

“Certain bacteria bloom in response to psychological stress that aren’t necessarily good. They start to break down what we call the mucosal barrier—a line of mucus that lines our colon and protects the cells,” he said.  “Understanding how the hormone interacts with epithelial cells or what bacteria are doing to actually degrade the mucus, that kind of stuff will give us targets that we can then look at for potentially modifying with pharmaceuticals or others that would limit IBD. So that’s kind of the big picture goal.

“We want to get back to that balance of where the microbes and our cells live in harmony. But we have to understand the mechanisms behind what happens or what goes wrong in the first place for us to do that.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Mudar honored by ASHA Fellowship

Oct. 22, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The significance of an ASHA Fellowship is not lost on Raksha Mudar. 

In the summer of 2022, Speech and Hearing Science Associate Professor Raksha Mudar was elected a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). Fellowship is one of the highest forms of recognition given by ASHA and is a public declaration of an individual’s outstanding contributions to the discipline of communication sciences and disorders.

The significance of that recognition was not lost on Dr. Mudar.

“I am delighted to receive this honor from the association. To get recognized by the association for these efforts is really personally and professionally fulfilling,” said Mudar, who joined the University of Illinois in 2011. “My journey as a faculty in communication sciences and disorders has been so much fun. I enjoy what I get to do each day, from training the next generation of clinicians and scientists to conducting research examining intriguing questions about the aging brain and neuroplasticity.”

For Dr. Mudar, the ASHA appointment serves as validation for her research agenda, which was inspired by a personal experience.

“When I was an undergraduate student in speech and hearing science (at the University of Mysore in India), a family friend got diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s dementia,” she said. “This person was an eloquent storyteller. To watch his cognitive communication abilities deteriorate quickly was difficult to watch. His family struggled to understand his needs and wishes and got little help from his doctors on how to deal with these challenges. I was surprised to find that speech-language pathologists rarely worked with individuals with Alzheimer’s dementia at that time and this inspired me to pursue research on cognitive-communication issues in aging and neurodegenerative disorders.”

According to Dr. Mudar, an ASHA Fellow is expected to support and promote scientific and clinical leadership, interdisciplinary services, and an inclusive culture committed to supporting the needs of those with communication and swallowing disorders.
 
ASHA is the national professional association that sets the standard for professional practice in speech-language pathology  and audiology and serves as an accrediting body. To Dr. Mudar—who was also the AHS recipient of the Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring award—it represents something more than that.

“(ASHA) offers a great community for members to connect with each other, learn, and build scientific and clinical excellence,” she said. “Furthermore, ASHA’s advocacy in promoting the needs of individuals and families with communication disorders is critical to supporting communication as a basic human right.”

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Clinic helps wheelchair users adjust their ride

Oct. 22, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Helping a person who uses a wheelchair find a chair that fits their lifestyle is as important as helping someone find a pair of shoes that fit or helping someone find the right bike.

That’s the mission of the Illini Wheelchair and Scooter Clinic on the campus of the University of Illinois. The clinic is the creation of Laura Rice, an associate professor of Kinesiology and Community Health within the College of Applied Health Sciences.

The clinic began as a labor of love for Rice.

“Prior to the formal clinic, I was helping students on campus if they needed a new wheelchair, kind of just through DRES (Disability Resources & Educational Services) helping them out, but nothing was really formalized because I just didn’t have time,” said Rice, who is also interim director of the Master of Public Health (MPH) and Master of Health Administration (MHA) programs and associate director of the Center on Health, Aging, and Disability (CHAD).

[When I first moved to Illinois] “I had a 50 percent appointment at DRES, but it was helping out Jeanette Elliott, the physical therapist there,” Rice said. “Then I moved into a tenure track position and I needed to focus my time and effort on research. When I did get promoted, this was a nice opportunity where I had a bit more space to go back to that model. That’s why I started trying to formalize the clinic.”

The idea of a clinic came out of Rice’s previous work in Pittsburgh.

“I did work at a large seating clinic at the University of Pittsburgh. I felt that my interactions in the clinic with end users was really important to fuel my research. And then I also could help support the clients better because I had a strong research background,” she said.

The Illinois clinic has been open for approximately one year, operating out of Freer Hall on the Urbana-Champaign campus. The clinic helps clients select a piece of assistive technology, primarily a wheelchair or a scooter, to help them go about their day-to-day life, whether that’s going to class, going to work, or engaging with friends and family. 

“We really try to provide that support so that they can do the activities that they like and they need to do in everyday life,” Rice said.

The Wheelchair and Scooter Clinic is small, and students in the MHA program help Rice with clinic policies, working with clients and helping with billing.

“We’re not part of a large health care system,” Rice said. “The (client) can contact me, and then I work with them. It’s on campus, especially for students, they don’t have to try to figure out transportation to an off-campus location. The majority of people that I work with are people in need of new devices. I’ll talk to them, we’ll do an evaluation. I work with a wheelchair vendor. An example is like, you go to a doctor, he prescribes you a medication, but he doesn’t actually give you the pills. You go to CVS to get the pills. That vendor is the one who provides the actual device in consultation with me, making those recommendations and the person’s physician, ultimately.”

After the chair arrives, Rice and her assistants help make sure it fits the client and makes sure they have proper training.

For Rice, the clinic is the culmination of marrying her research to her work as a physical therapist.

“I really wanted to be able to step back and kind of really look at like, ‘Why am I doing these things? And how can we improve?’ Because, especially for individuals with disabilities, there’s really a lack of research on different ways to support quality of life and community participation. So that is why I got into research was to have that opportunity to better understand the needs of clients I would like to serve and be able to implement those ideas.”

To contact the Wheelchair and Scooter Clinic, email wheelchair-clinic@mx.uillinois.edu.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Message from the Dean

Oct. 23, 2023 | Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell

Hello, everyone.

I hope this message finds you all in good health and high spirits as we embark on a new academic year at the College of Applied Health Sciences. As the dean of our esteemed college, I am thrilled to welcome you to the fall 2023 semester and share some updates.

This edition of the newsletter is a testament to our relentless commitment to excellence, innovation and community engagement. In the past year, our college has made remarkable strides in research, education and outreach. In this newsletter, we celebrate these accomplishments and highlight the incredible individuals who have made them possible.

Our faculty members continue to shine as leaders in their respective fields, producing groundbreaking research that contributes to the advancement of health sciences. Our students, the heart of our community, have continued to excel academically and demonstrate their passion for making a positive impact in the world of healthcare. Moreover, our alumni network continues to grow and thrive, with our graduates making waves in various sectors of the healthcare industry.

I encourage all of you to actively engage with the newsletter by reading and sharing. This publication is a reflection of our shared journey, and your input is invaluable in making it a meaningful resource for our community.

Thank you for your dedication to the College of Applied Health Sciences. Together, we will continue to empower excellence and drive positive change in the field of health sciences.

Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell,

Dean, College of Applied Health Sciences

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