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.

Starting in August, the one-year, $25,000 grant – one of four awarded through the Thriving Communities Research Pilot Grant Program – will fund a project designed to identify needs for and improve access to early childhood development resources. By focusing largely on Spanish-speaking and low-income families, the pilot program will aim to bridge systemic gaps in early intervention.

Chu traces the roots of the project to her partnership, started about three years ago, with the Children's Museum of Richmond. Her initial efforts with the museum involved volunteer developmental screenings, which later expanded to the Sacred Heart Center and the Richmond Public Library.

“After completing the developmental screening, we'd give families a report summarizing the screening results, but it felt a little lacking,” Chu said. “A lot of times, families don’t know where to get help. We felt like there was something more we could do to help connect them with the right services.”

The pilot program aims to create a comprehensive service navigation model for families with children with developmental delays. This platform would ideally combine all necessary information – dependent on factors like the child’s age and the family’s insurance – into an easily accessible format.

Chu’s core research in the SPRE Lab focuses on developing sensory assessments for young children, focusing on somatosensory processing like proprioceptive discrimination skills – the ability to know where one's limbs are in space. The screenings conducted as part of the grant project will offer a more comprehensive assessment, including cognitive, language and other developmental areas.

“It’s exciting because it’s a new line of research for me,” Chu said. “My research has typically been focused on lab-based assessments. In this project, we will be working directly with families in the community and, at the same time, offering a learning experience for students in our academic program. ”

Chu’s promotion to tenured faculty is a testament to her dedication to her field. "Being granted tenure feels like a validation, a recognition of the contributions I have made to the field,” she said.

by John Battiston