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Hello, I’d like to welcome you to the Department of Occupational Therapy at New York University.
My name is Kristie Patten Koenig, I am Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Occupational
Therapy. Occupational therapy is about really helping
an individual, no matter what age and what disability, disease process, or just from
a wellness standpoint -- helping that person engage in meaningful occupations in their
everyday lives. Some of the things that I think we can really position ourselves to
do as one of the top OT schools in the country is to lead the way in a couple areas:
Our strong relationship with the Department of Education: I think we want to capitalize
on that. We have programs that we are involved in, both at the educational level and the
research level, with the Department of Education, which services over one million kids. It’s
the largest school district in the nation, and OT’s work in the schools, and to have
that relationship with the DOE, I think puts NYU at a very unique place to be leaders in
school-based practice. We have wonderful faculty that, if I am talking
about the vision I have for this department, it absolutely embraces their area of research
and practice because it’s so central to society needs today, whether that’s the
aging population; those with cognitive issues, whether it’s from dementia, concussion,
traumatic brain injury; all the way down to the teeniest-tiny babies and working on interventions
in research related to intensive care units for premature babies. We have people here
that are doing some really amazing research around those areas, and I really look forward
to them developing and them being put on the map for their areas of research.
But also, NYU and NYU Steinhardt have a global mission, and we are well-positioned, I think,
to be a part of that global mission in that we have courses that we run in Ghana, research
going on in Ghana, and we draw a large international population of students from Asia. And I think
our position with the portal campuses at NYU, NYU Shanghai, and NYU Abu Dhabi is to have
OT have an international focus as well. I think NYU is in a very unique place, and having
an OT department at NYU Steinhardt that has this global mission is in a really unique
place to be very visionary as far as delivering services internationally, delivering education
internationally, and doing research internationally.