Gabe Byars
Assistant Professor
School of Health Sciences
Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA)
What he teaches:
Functional anatomy, Physical Dysfunction I and II, Modalities II and Cultural, Legal and Ethical Issues in Health Care
Years teaching at SLCC:
5
Undergraduate degree:
Southeast Missouri State University
Master’s:
MS Biology from Duke University; MS Occupational Therapy from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Why working at SLCC matters:
Teaching in the occupational therapy assistant (OTA) program at SLCC gives me the opportunity to shape the future of my profession. Occupational therapy is a healthcare profession focused on enabling individuals with disabilities to perform everyday tasks.
Greatest professional challenge:
My greatest challenge is tied to what I love about my role. Students in the OTA program have four semesters to grow into practitioners. This means that we have a short amount of teach the needed knowledge, skills, and clinical reasoning. However, that is also what I love about my role. I love to see the our students growth and be able to see them practice as occupational therapy assistants.
Greatest professional accomplishment:
My greatest professional accomplishment is a shared accomplishment of all faculty of the OTA program. The OTA program has maintained a 100% pass rate on our national boards for the past five years. To put that in perspective, the average pass rate for OTA programs nationally is 63%.
Advice for students or others:
The advice I give most frequently to students is to simply breathe. We all get caught up in thinking about the future – projects, deadlines, etc. This overwhelms us and creates anxiety. I find that simply having students breathe to be very helpful. This simple act of mindfulness re-centers students on the present moment. In the present moment, students can focus on learning or making progress on a project.
Future plans:
I am currently developing an open educational resource to support our physical dysfunction lab classes. The resource will be an online text book that contains videos and descriptions of skills taught in the course. I have several goals for this project. As I mentioned above, it is necessary for our students to learn a lot in two years. This is especially problematic with skills that can’t easily learned from a text book. This project would give students a resource to review instruction on skills to support their learning and application. My second goal is to use this resource to flip the classroom. By watching video instructions before class, class time could be more effectively spent practicing and giving student feedback.
Family:
Married to my wonderful wife, Courtney, and co-exist with two dogs and three cats.
Hobbies:
Being outdoors and exploring on foot and bike. Lifting heavy things.
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