Occupational Therapy Assistant Faculty

Hello, my name is Ann Custer. I'm the Occupational Therapy Assistant program director for Linn-Benton Community College. Hello, my name is Maggie Hotch, I am the academic fieldwork coordinator and faculty at the OTA program at LBCC. Hi, I'm Mashelle Painter, and I am the Distance Education coordinator for the Occupational Therapy Assistant program. I've been an occupational therapist for many years. I am a certified occupational therapy assistant with over 27 years of experience. I currently serve on the Occupational Therapy Licensing Board for the state of Oregon, in addition to my teaching responsibilities. I've worked at Chemawa Indian High School with Native American youth, which was great fun. I did a lot of mental health work there as well as sort of more traditional, school-based occupational therapy. And then came to LB, where I really love teaching. As Distance Education coordinator, my role is to work with our students who are in our program but attending at a distance through their partner community colleges. I really like being the fieldwork coordinator. I get to interact with all the places that may employ you or take you as a student all throughout Oregon, and we have a pretty small, tight-knit community of OTs in Oregon, which has been really supportive of our program. I love OT because of the variety. I love variety, and that's something that you get with occupational therapy. I, for instance, have worked as a practitioner with clients from age 3 to 103. I've worked in hospitals, rehab centers, outpatient clinics, skilled nursing facilities, home health, schools, and I've also done administration and now education. So there's a lot of places to work and a lot of things to do in the field. I really appreciate the variety that OT has offered. It fits with every disability and every area of your life, from leisure to work to just taking care of yourself. I love the ability to help other people help themselves. And that's really what occupational therapy is all about: helping people to overcome challenges and to become more independent and to become more engaged. I also love solving problems, and that's another big part of what occupational therapy does. There is an analytical component to be able to figure things out, and then there's also a really creative component to be able to come up with solutions. I think there's something in OT for just about everybody. there's enough art to keep the creative types busy and enough science to keep the more analytical folks on track, and the combination of those two is usually what people really fall in love with about OT. And all of that is done in conjunction with other people; sometimes it's just with one other person—with a client— and then other times it's with an entire group of people. So working together with other people is another piece that's really important. OT has been a wonderful profession for me. I really appreciate the profession and really love what I do. So if you find that you also like helping other people help themselves, and if you have an analytical and a creative nature, and you like variety and working with people, then this may be a career for you.