O&P EDUCATOR
Education for Everyone Joanna Kenton, MHA, CPO, LPO, FAAOP, imparts her knowledge to O&P students—and helps plan curricula at AOPA’s National Assemblies
This month, O&P Almanac debuts a new column focusing on experienced educators within the O&P profession. Here, you will get to know inspiring individuals who educate the next generation of O&P professionals.
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MARCH 2022 | O&P ALMANAC
S AN INSTRUCTOR OF prosthetic
technology, Joanna Kenton, MHA, CPO, LPO, FAAOP, is part of a very small “club” in O&P. Kenton is a professor at Century College in White Bear Lake, Minnesota—one of only six programs in the country offering education for future O&P technicians. She took on the role in August 2017 after nine years in clinical practice, and she is proud to call O&P education her “true calling.” At Century College, Kenton is responsible for teaching several courses, including transtibial, transfemoral, and upper-extremity fabrication. She loves her job—particularly experiencing the “fervor and passion of our students to learn.” She enjoys watching their skills progress and seeing them land their first job in O&P. Teaching prosthetic fabrication has evolved in recent years, says Kenton, given the rise of COVID-19 and the ensuing need to integrate remote learning into parts of the curriculum. “The pandemic has changed the face of education. We had to course-correct to provide instruction at home” during the early days of the pandemic. Most prosthetic technical skill instruction still requires in-person, hands-on
learning for best results, but Kenton would like to see the use of virtual reality and online textbooks to cement learning objectives in the future. Just like her own students, Kenton recognizes the value of ongoing education. She prides herself on continuously seeking knowledge—and was rewarded for her efforts in May 2021 when she earned a master’s in healthcare administration from Minnesota State University Moorhead. As part of her master’s coursework, Kenton completed a capstone research project in which she polled O&P employers to discover their expectations for technicians. “There are so many different products now,” so she set out to learn “what’s really going on in today’s clinical environments” so she could properly prepare her students for entry-level careers as technicians. “The number of respondents was low, but I gained some insights from those who participated,” Kenton says—for example, that the majority of facilities prefer a simple one-lamination removable pin-lock suspension for transtibial designs. She has since implemented some new learning objectives in the classes she teaches.
PHOTO: Courtesy of Joanna Kenton, MHA, CPO, LPO, FAAOP
Joanna Kenton, MHA, CPO, LPO, FAAOP, works with a student, Charles, who is squaring joints on a transtibial prosthesis.
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