2020 AWARDS CEREMONY October 1, 2020 7:00PM-8:00PM (ET)
Order of Ceremony WELCOME
BETH ENNIS, PT, EDD APTA KENTUCKY PRESIDENT
APTA KY/REHABCARE ALL-ACADEMIC TEAM
DONNA ROBACKER DIRECTOR OF CLINICAL QUALITY PERFORMANCE REHABCARE
PRESENTATION OF AWARDS
BETH ENNIS, PT, EDD
OUTSTANDING CLINICAL INSTRUCTOR AWARD OUTSTANDING PHYSICAL THERAPIST ASSISTANT AWARD DAVID A. PARISER OUTSTANDING EDUCATOR AWARD DONALD H. LANGE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
RECOGNITION OF OUTGOING OFFICERS
LISA VOLZ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
A short business meeting will follow the awards presentation.
Thank you for joining our celebration. Please continue to the next page for more information on our award winners.
APTA KY/RehabCare AllAcademic Team TAYLOR ALBERTSON WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY DPT PROGRAM
SABRINA ARCHER WEST KENTUCKY COMMUNITY & TECHNICAL COLLEGE PTA PROGRAM
TAYLOR CHASE LEVI SOMERSET COMMUNITY COLLEGE PTA PROGRAM
LAUREN MILLER WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY DPT PROGRAM
APTA KY/RehabCare AllAcademic Team DESTINY STEARMAN WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY DPT PROGRAM
MARY UNDERWOOD SOMERSET COMMUNITY COLLEGE PTA PROGRAM
Outstanding Clinical Instructor Award The Outstanding Clinical Instructor Award is presented to a committed and dynamic educator with a passion for mentoring students. Colleagues who observe Keegan in the clinic with students describe her as "compassionate, encouraging, patient, and possessing the keen ability to give constructive feedback." Students receive handson instruction and are challenged to reflect on these experiences, making them better clinicians. Continued next page.
Keegan Whitney Smith PT, DPT
Keegan's students leave their clinical rotation with her more confident and prepared. In a student's own words: "Dr. Smith’s combination of compassion, altruism, ethical values, and integrity make her an ideal candidate for this award. Working with diligence and excellence, Dr. Smith exhibited different techniques and types of communication to ensure I learned properly and grew as a clinician. For example, when I did not understand a concept, she created opportunities for me to learn and once I understood, to apply that skill and knowledge. She challenged me in such a manner that my PTA career will forever be changed for the better. She truly goes great lengths to create an advantageous, comfortable, and healthy environment that encourages learning and student success. Just as Dr. Smith cares and works for the betterment of her patients, she does the same for her students." APTA Kentucky congratulates Dr. Keegan Smith on receiving this year's Outstanding Clinical Instructor Award.
Outstanding Physical Therapist Assistant Service Award The Outstanding Physical Therapist Assistant Service Award is presented to a clinician whose service to the association and promotion of the profession is extraordinary compared to their colleagues. While enrolled at Somerset Community College (SCC), Ms. Dalton was a strong student and mentor. She maintained a cumulative grade point average of 3.553 and was excited about opportunities to learn about and serve the profession. Highly respected by her peers, Ms. Dalton was elected to serve as president of SCC’s Physical Therapy Student Organization, where she led the program’s fundraising efforts in the Marquette Challenge, a national fundraiser for the Foundation for Physical Therapy, with SCC being named the “Outstanding PTA Program” by the Foundation twice due to Ms. Dalton’s efforts. Continued next page.
Molly Jane Dalton, PTA
In 2017, she was elected to the APTA Student Assembly Board of Directors as the Director of Student PTA Relations. In this role, she also served as the Inter-professional Collaboration Project Committee Liaison and as a liaison to both the Aquatics and Acute Care Sections. Ms. Dalton has attended numerous state and national conferences and was selected to represent Kentucky at the Federal Advocacy Forum, where she will met with legislators about topics specific to the physical therapy profession. Since graduation, she has continued to be involved at the state level, most recently as inaugural chair for APTA KY's New Professionals Special Interest Group. She also serves on the APTA KY Conference Committee. Locally, she serves as a career mentor for a first-year PTA student and is an active participant in her own professional development. APTA Kentucky congratulates Molly Dalton, PTA on being named recipient of the 2020 Outstanding Physical Therapist Assistant Service Award.
David A. Pariser Exceptional Educator Award The David A. Pariser Exceptional Educator Award recognizes educators who exhibit exceptional teaching effectiveness in the academic setting and excellence as a role model for academic teaching for students, faculty, and clinicians. Professor Lesch, a physical therapist who wears his "septuagenarian badge" proudly, is an actively engaged academic educator who has taught entry-level students for 40 years. Professor Lesch has held faculty appointments at Bellarmine University, University of Louisville, University of Kentucky, Washington University, and
Dennis C. Lesch, PT, GCS, CEEAA
Medical College of Ohio. While serving as the Director of Rehabilitation Services at Humana Hospital with the University of Louisville, he began a permanent part-time faculty role at the University of Louisville in 1984 and transitioned with the program to Bellarmine University in 2001. Continued next page.
In 2016, he became a full-time Bellarmine faculty member and he developed and launched the geriatric residency. He is the only faculty member who appears in every University of Louisville and Bellarmine University composite photo, 35 in total. Addressing all types of learners (e.g., auditory, visual, kinesthetic) is of paramount importance to Dennis. Students frequently comment about how Professor Lesch can break down information for them in the way they learn best and how he always takes the time to make sure students walk away with an understanding of the information. He is always the first to volunteer to host a review session in the evenings or on weekends prior to practical examinations and tailors those sessions thoughtfully based on the needs of the students. Embracing new technology and new ideas from co-faculty are marks of his openness to experiment pedagogically to see if there’s a better way to teach. His experimentation is always supported by meticulous note-keeping and a remarkable filing system that enables him to retrieve reflections and student feedback about a lecture or lab from the previous years to evolve that class the next go-around. The openness to experiment and evolve served him well the past two semesters of online education due to the coronavirus pandemic. There was no timid and slow wading into the new waters of online course delivery with hesitancy, nerves, and fear; rather, he did a cannonball. The challenges faced were met with energy and enthusiasm. "Going above and beyond,� with the student always at the center of his focus, could be his billboard as a teacher. As an example of this, he recently joined as co-faculty in Functional Anatomy. He noticed a disconnect in the carryover from the students’ summer Clinical Anatomy course and the fall Functional Anatomy course. The following summer, he audited the Clinical Anatomy course so that he could improve the transition and strengthen the connections between the two courses. A colleague states, "Any time we read about high impact pedagogical practices (HIPs), we think of Dennis, who has been demonstrating HIPs before they were hip. Any time we need to think about how to more actively engage learners to better understand a concept, we think, 'What Would Dennis Do?'. Continued next page.
We have co-taught with him for over 7 years and continue to find ourselves keenly observing how he structures a lecture/lab (in which he always has an eye on optimizing time while being respectful of time), how he delivers content, and how he engages the students through a skillful use of humor, clinical applications, and active learning so that we can improve upon our own teaching practices." One of Dennis's students says, "Professor Lesch is an upstanding individual who puts the needs of his students before his own. For example, he takes time outside of class for students that need further understanding of basic concepts pivotal to the physical therapist’s role in acute care settings. Along with this, he also holds recitations every week to make sure we have a good grasp of the week’s content and are prepared for any exams coming up soon. With class content, he encourages us to know not just what is presented in the notes themselves, but also how to best apply information learned to clinical examples in our field. Even more remarkable, he offered to meet with me individually after finals were completed to answer any questions I had about a future career specialty in geriatrics. " A favorite phrase of Dr. Dave Pariser’s was, “We stand on the shoulders of giants.” Such are the shoulders of Professor Dennis Lesch. APTA Kentucky congratulates Dennis Lesch on being named the 2020 David A. Pariser Exceptional Educator.
Donald H.Lange Lifetime Achievement Award The Donald H. Lange Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to a clinician that embodies the Physical Therapy profession over the course of their career. Dr. Nancy Urbscheit has demonstrated a commitment to life-long learning in her career through her educational attainment, scholarship pursuits, teaching activities, and Continued next page.
Nancy Urbscheit, PT, PhD
community service. Dr. Urbscheit earned her degrees in Physical Therapy in 1968 and 1970 and a PhD in Physiology in 1973 at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Buffalo. She began her career in academia in 1973 and has not stopped since. After academic appointments at SUNY Buffalo, the University of Iowa, and East Carolina University, she moved to Louisville, Kentucky in 1983 to help start the Physical Therapy program at the University of Louisville. She transitioned as a Professor with the program when it moved to Bellarmine University in 2001 where she continues as Professor Emerita. Dr. Urbscheit’s pioneering spirit to promote, cultivate, and expand the profession led her to become one of the first physical therapists to receive grant funding from the National Institutes of Health. She has 13 peer-reviewed publications, beginning with 5 articles in Physical Therapy in the 1970’s. Notably, she’s had chapters related to neurology in Umphred’s Neurological Rehabilitation and in Nelson and Currier’s Textbook of Electrotherapy. She has 13 scientific and professional presentations including leading 2-day workshops (Neurological Evaluation at Emory University; Extrapyramidal Disease and the Control of Movement at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago; Management of the Neurological Client at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation). Raising our collective consciousness about the need to advocate for our patients and serve as a catalyst for financial support of that advocacy is second nature to her – she served as the Team Captain for the Bellarmine University Physical Therapy Program Polar Bear Plunge for the Special Olympics of Kentucky for 9 years. Lastly, she epitomizes how to leverage one’s personal talents and passions as a professional physical therapist with the aim of helping others. She has a love for music – she plays the flute and piccolo in the Holy Name Band, is a member of the Panpipes Flute Choir, and was a volunteer music teacher for students with learning disabilities at Pitt Academy. She has transferred that love of music to rehabilitation, serving as the “Let’s Dance” instructor for individuals with Parkinson disease since 2008. One colleague states of Dr. Urbscheit: "She has a knack for making evidence accessible and understandable by students while always Continued next page.
connecting the evidence to clinical practice and application. Her knowledge of neuroanatomy and neurologic disorders is remarkable but more so is her ability to seamlessly connect neuroanatomy to neurologic deficits and clinical cases. She demonstrated this most recently this summer when she readily accepted the invitation to be a guest speaker for the first-ever online offering of Neurology due to the pandemic. She was as captivating online as she is in person, sharing personal stories that brought the content to life. Lastly, she has been a role model for me to always pursue curiosity and think deeply about what we do. She stopped by my office last year to share an idea that might be worth pursuing in terms of research – she’d been pondering the potential effects of electrical stimulation on the anterior tibialis to address freezing of gait in individuals with Parkinson disease. This is what her 'retirement' looks like – always thinking, always trying to help." APTA Kentucky congratulates Dr. Nancy Urbscheit on being named recipient of the 2020 Donald H. Lange Lifetime Achievement Award.
APTA Kentucky Thanks Beth Ennis & Welcomes Charlie Workman BETH ENNIS, PT, EDD, PCS OUTGOING PRESIDENT
CHARLIE WORKMAN, PT, MBA INCOMING PRESIDENT