Every day College of Health Professions students, alumni, faculty and staff do extraordinary things. Read more about our latest achievements below.
When they step into the simulation lab on the second floor of the College of Health Professions this fall, students will find it has undergone considerable changes. Thanks to a $108,000 allocation from the Higher Education Equipment Trust Fund, it now features a more immersive, hands-on training environment that reflects the evolving demands of modern health care.
Virginia Chu, Ph.D., OTR/L, is celebrating a dual milestone: her promotion to tenured faculty and a grant from the VCU Division of Community Engagement. The associate professor in VCU’s Department of Occupational Therapy and director of the Sensorimotor Performance and Rehabilitation Engineering (SPRE) Lab works at the forefront of understanding sensorimotor development in early childhood.
By strategically shuffling how it uses dedicated lab space, Radiation Sciences is introducing new technology and expanding hands-on training for future practitioners, which is critical in a field where pinpoint accuracy is the only acceptable treatment.
As VCU’s OT Academy wrapped on a Friday in mid-June, 12 participants sat in the College of Health Professions, eating lunch and laughing, surrounded by their recently completed Lego creations. They had been tasked with creating visual representations of their progress since the program’s first day.
In just a few short years, legalized gambling in Virginia has exploded, most notably with the opening of casinos across the state and booming online sports betting.
When Waganesh “Waggy” Zeleke, Ph.D., returned to her native Ethiopia as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, she brought her personal history, native language and a deep commitment to healing trauma through culturally responsive care.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) researcher and survivor Kelli Talley, Ph.D., recently joined national experts and advocates at the U.S. Capitol to help shape the conversation on brain injury recovery and research.
Fully outfitted in scrubs, Joe Wilkins walks into the Bon Secours St. Francis Medical Center and heads to the rehab unit. Long before he became the hospital’s president, Wilkins was a physical therapist – and that part of him shows up every first Friday of the month.
At the intersection of clinical practice, scientific discovery and international collaboration, VCU physical therapy researcher Mike Kiefer, DPT, Ph.D., is helping rewrite the future for patients with rare and progressive muscle disorders.
On any given weekday afternoon, you’ll likely find Colin Thibodeau, M.S., carefully pipetting reagents, arranging lab benches or chatting with a group of Medical Laboratory Sciences students gearing up for their next hands-on experiment. Just a few years ago, Thibodeau was a student himself – navigating lab protocols, mastering microbiology techniques and in many ways trying to figure out what was next.
Have a story about the College of Health Professions in action that you'd like to share? Contact us at mgburkett@vcu.edu or (804) 828-7247.