Every day College of Health Professions students, alumni, faculty and staff do extraordinary things. Read more about our latest achievements below.
The stories in this issue remind us that the power of a VCU Physical Therapy education stretches far beyond our campus. From welcoming 56 students at the White Coat Ceremony to training in upgraded simulation labs and learning alongside alums who return to mentor, our program continues to surround students with the support and real-world experiences that shape confident, compassionate practitioners.
When they stepped into the simulation lab on the second floor of the College of Health Professions this fall, physical and occupational therapy students found it had 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.
When Chelsea “CJ” Duppen PT, DPT, PhD began treating patients in rural North Carolina, she was one of only two clinicians in her county trained to handle neurologic diagnoses.
Understanding how individuals with lower-limb amputations navigate their communities – and why many remain dissatisfied with their mobility, even after successful rehabilitation – is the focus of a new research project led by Paul Kline, DPT, Ph.D., assistant professor in VCU’s Department of Physical Therapy.
Anne Lorio, DPT, Ph.D., a 2001 graduate of VCU’s physical therapy masters program, was already nervous in the moments before delivering a graduation address to her physical therapy students at Georgia State University earlier this year. The call she received before taking the stage made the moment even more memorable.
It’s easy for life to get in the way. Yet three graduates of VCU’s College of Health Professions Physical Therapy program — all in demanding, full-time practice — continue to find ways to give back to the program that helped mold their careers.
For Michael Fiorante, DPT, soccer has always been more than a sport. It’s a language that anyone can speak.
For first-year Physical Therapy student Zion Segears, earning the Rizing Tide Scholarship is more than just financial support, it’s a stepping stone toward his dream of owning his own physical therapy practice and helping others find healing, just as he once did.
Before the Physical Therapy Class of 2028 donned their white coats for the first time, Cameron Massumi, DPT, asked them to close their eyes and raise their hands if they had ever doubted their worthiness to wear one.
At this year’s Robert L. Lamb Distinguished Lectureship, Rob Landel, DPT, challenged VCU physical therapy students to seek out opportunities to specialize – but learn to cross lanes because therapists can best help patients when they do.
From the chair
Benjamin Darter, PT, Ph.D.
VCU Physical Therapy students are looking to extend their 5-year streak of winning the Marquette Challenge, a national fundraiser supporting the Foundation for Physical Therapy Research (FPTR). To honor this run of victories, the event has been renamed the VCU-Marquette Challenge for this year.
During an awards luncheon, Physical Therapy celebrated the Class of 2025 and presented several recognitions.
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.
For uninsured patients who have nowhere to turn, the CARES Clinic offers something rare: a chance for a better quality of life.
Earning her physical therapy degree in May marks the latest milestone for Feather Wright’s decades-long relationship with the discipline that began during her initial career in the U.S. Army.
In our latest newsletter, find an array of stories and other valuable insights about the program, including:
Keeping an important streak going, VCU Physical Therapy students raised the most funds for research to earn the Marquette Challenge for the fifth year in a row. For the next year, the event will be titled the VCU-Marquette Challenge to recognize this top finish. VCU raised $24,150.60 - representing nearly a fifth of the total $150,000 raised by PT programs across the country.
In addition to welcoming the incoming Class of 2027 and presenting them with their white coats, the Physical Therapy presented scholarships to more than a dozen students across the program during its fall ceremony. Those awards join a pair of scholarships presented during Commencement activities last spring.
Whether playing simulated dodgeball or fishing, individuals who participate in immersive video games get distracted from chronic back pain and make specific movements that ease their discomfort and allow them to engage in more active lives, according to preliminary findings by a VCU physical therapy researcher. James Thomas, Ph.D., professor and director of the Motor Control Lab, presented the early results, based on five years of data collection, during the International Association for the Study of Pain’s 2024 World Congress this summer in Amsterdam.
Growing up in a rural North Carolina community that attracted a lot of retirees, Paul Kline saw his neighbors every day struggle with mobility issues. “I joked that’s how I became interested in physical therapy, because I saw firsthand the challenges my neighbors were dealing with as they got older,” Kline says.
From Virginia clinics to remote Haitian villages, Kai Kennedy, D.P.T., has dedicated her career to ensuring that everyone – no matter their background or zip code – has access to the care they need to live their fullest lives.
Tamara Buck, PT, DPT, PCS, is on a mission to get children who aren’t physically active moving more.
In pairs, members of the Class of 2027 crossed the Kontos Building stage to accept their white coats – a symbol of their commitment to their future profession as physical therapists.
Paul Kline, P.T., D.P.T., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University College of Health Professions Department of Physical Therapy, has been awarded a grant from the 2024 VCU Quest Fund.
A team of researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University College of Health Professions and College of Engineering are using robotic technology to better understand the long-term impacts that concussions can have on patients. The goal of the project is to develop a model for assessing the level of physical impairment caused by a concussion and how long it takes to recover.
A team of researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University College of Health Professions and College of Engineering are using robotic technology to better understand the long-term impacts that concussions can have on patients. The goal of the project is to develop a model for assessing the level of physical impairment caused by a concussion and how long it takes to recover.
In this episode of CHP Conversations, we talk to Dr. Ann Dunbar, alumna of the physical therapy program and founder of the 'Honoring Our Mentors Physical Therapy Scholarship.' Dr. Dunbar shares her experience with the College of Health Professions and what motivated her to establish this fund to support the students of today while remembering the contributions of those helping students reach their professional goals.
In our latest newsletter, find an array of stories and other valuable insights about the program, including:
Virginia Commonwealth University’s College of Health Professions has appointed Benjamin Darter, P.T., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Physical Therapy. Darter has served as interim chair since fall 2022.
June 26, 2023 - A group of students in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Physical Therapy in the College of Health Professions, was part of a volunteer project this month to help meet the needs of patients with significant mobility impairment at Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU (CHOR).
Across VCU's campuses, instructors, researchers and clinicians have turned to virutal reality (VR) for teaching, training and patient care.
Evangeline Yoder was first introduced to the physical therapy profession as a child while being treated by an orthopaedic surgeon in Richmond named Dr. Thomas Wheeldon. Yoder had adolescent idiopathic scoliosis – an abnormal curvature of the spine that appears in late childhood or adolescence. Wheeldon received accreditation in 1931 from the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) to establish the first physical therapy school “in the south” at Richmond Professional Institute, the forerunner of the Medical College of Virginia’s (MCV) physical therapy program.
Oct. 31, 2022
The ‘VCU-Marquette Challenge’ is a national competition in which physical therapy students compete to raise the most money to support APTA’s Foundation for Physical Therapy Research (FPTR). VCU Physical Therapy students came out on top again this year, and were awarded the coveted first place among 79 participating programs in the country. This marks three years in a row that VCU students have won the competition signaling their clear and unwavering passion and dedication to support physical therapy research. Congratulations to Shawne Soper, who supported the PT student leaders in developing and implementing a year-long fundraising campaign that raised just $23,053.72.
Image by Tom Kojcsich, University Relations
Two PT faculty received national awards at the 2020/2021 American Physical Therapy Association Awards Ceremony in Washington DC on September 12th, 2021.
We recently had the opportunity to talk one on one with Dr. Tracey Adler, a physical therapy graduate of the College of Health Professions, (formerly known as VCU’s School of Allied Health Professions).