Melinda Cozzolino, Creighton University post-professional clinical doctoral student from Ithaca, N.Y., enrolled in the Web-based occupational therapy program, received a $300,000 grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration, Bureau of Health Professions, Allied Health Project.
Cozzolino wrote the grant as part of a Health Systems Management class assignment to help fund the expansion of "The Center for Life Skills: An Interdisciplinary Model for Student Training," at Ithaca College. Dr. Marlene Aitken is the course professor.
The grant will be used to establish community-based allied health training programs that link academic centers to rural clinical settings and expand the interdisciplinary training centers to emphasize innovative models to link allied health clinical practice education and research.
The project will involve occupational therapy, physical therapy, recreational therapy, speech language and gerontology.
The Center for Life Skills, a community-based interdisciplinary program initiative for Allied Health students, faculty, clients and rural health practitioners, was designed for interdisciplinary intervention with clients who have had strokes and serves as experiential learning for Ithaca College Allied Health students. The Center for Life Skills also offers education to rural health care practitioners.
"Just knowing that I had the resources of all of the professors at Creighton University in addition to my highly-experienced classmates, gave me the courage to write the grant," Cozzolino said.
Creighton University's Doctor of Occupational Therapy program began in 1991, and in 2001, the Web-based pathway was created for working therapists who wished to pursue a doctoral degree.
Creighton University is an independent, Catholic, comprehensive university operated by the Jesuits, who have a 500-year tradition of excellence in education. Creighton has been ranked at or near the top of Midwestern universities in the U.S. News & World Report magazine's "America's Best Colleges" edition for more than a decade.
Creighton enrolls more than 6,300 students of diverse faiths and races from across the United States and 65 countries. The student body is taught by 700 full-time faculty members in the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Business Administration, the Graduate School, University College, and schools of Dentistry, Pharmacy and Health Professions, Law, Medicine, Nursing and Summer Sessions. The University is located in Omaha, Nebraska (pop. 800,000 metro area) on a 92-acre campus adjacent to the downtown business district.
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