CEO’S MESSAGE

By Danny Langfield, NMEDA CEO

NMEDA recently signed an agreement with the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Rehabilitation Science & Technology (Pitt RST) to oversee and administer our Education & Training program. Pitt’s Amy Lane, OTR/L, CDRS will serve as our Director of Education & Training, with at least 50% of her time devoted exclusively to NMEDA. Resources from Pitt RST’s continuing education team will also be made available to the association to assist with our Learning Management System (LMS) implementation and ongoing online education offerings.

Many of you know Amy, who has been a fixture at the NMEDA conference for over a decade. She is a past president of ADED and a 20+ -year veteran of the auto mobility industry who brings the unique perspective of an allied health professional to our program. Pitt RST’s experience with hosting the International Seating Symposium will be very helpful as we work toward building next year’s Annual Conference & Expo (to be co-located with ADED, September 18-20—mark your calendars!).

This partnership with Pitt RST means so much to NMEDA’s future—here’s why. Our association is currently perceived primarily as a special-interest trade group representing the interests of the auto mobility industry in general, and wheelchair van dealers specifically. While we have worked hard to educate allied health professionals and other influencers on the importance of our Quality Assurance Program and the QAP difference, we’ve not achieved as much awareness as we would have liked.

Our partnership with Pitt RST gives us the opportunity to change up that narrative significantly. Over the next few years, I’d like to leverage that partnership and our CAP fund awareness resources to reposition NMEDA as a recognized national credentialing association that administers the QAP accreditation and the NMEDA Certified Technician certification. Our association with Pitt RST, and the reality of a registered OT and CDRS in Amy Lane as our Director of Education & Training, is key to this repositioning.

Most of the influencers we are tryingto reach operate in a world wherecredentials, for both organizationsand individuals, are intrinsic to theirprofessions and an important part oftheir everyday lives.

Put another way: a quality program for auto mobility dealerships is likely perceived very differently by influencers than the national recognition of a true accreditation and certification program. NMEDA, on our own, is unlikely to be able to change that perception from the former to the latter. But together with a globally recognized academic entity such as Pitt RST, we can change not only the perception but the reality of our purpose. And Pitt will undoubtedly hold our feet to the fire to ensure our programs are truly held to their exacting standards.

We have a contractual agreement with Pitt to administer our Education & Training program, specifically directed by Amy Lane, as described above. The reality is, that agreement covers a lot more than the ivorytower academia of instructional design and the like. Amy and her team, aided by the very able bootson-the-ground of NMEDA staffer Mikala Ballard, will also be in charge of answering our members’ everyday training questions; organizing our Manufacturer Service Schools, coordinating our dealers’ CAMS events, assisting with certificates and issues with training courses, etc… in short, all of the somewhat less glamorous aspects of running our Education & Training program.

The contract with Pitt RST is just one aspect of our relationship. NMEDA and Pitt RST are forging a true partnership, one that has been gestating for over a year, in fact. As many of you know, Dr. Rory Cooper, former Chair of Pitt RST and founder and director of the renowned Human Engineering Resources Laboratory (HERL), was gracious enough to sit as a panelist on the Rolling Disrupters panel discussion at our conference in March. This stemmed from a visit I made for a tour of the remarkable HERL facilities in Pittsburgh in November of 2019. (I also caught a Steelers game—in person—with thousands of other humans in close proximity—can you imagine such a thing?). I originally made Dr. Cooper’s acquaintance at a PVA Summit in Orlando earlier that year, where he presented me with one of the trading cards he had been immortalized with from the U.S. Patent and Trademark office as part of their Hall of Inventors (pictured below).

A few months ago I was honored by a request from Dr. Cooper to serve on an advisory committee for Pitt’s newly established University Transportation Center, made possible by a $1M grant Pitt was recently awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Obviously, I was proud to accept.

In conclusion, regarding this partnership, our association has a lot to be excited about, both now and in the future. For an additional perspective, please see Amy Lane’s introductory column found on page 44.

Of course, all of this was brought about by the untimely passing earlier this year of our previous Education & Training Director, the beloved Andy Ghillyer. But I must say, Andy (ever the academic) would surely have approved of this partnership with Pitt. He would have delighted in pointing out that no one individual could replace him, and that it took an entire department of a major university to get the job done!

Andy, rest in peace. For the rest of us…

Go Panthers! ---