Months before the pandemic hit, students in USI’s Occupational Therapy (OT) program helped bring some excitement to 235 elementary students participating in EVSC’s Special Olympics Unified Champions Game Day.
The partnership began months ago when Dr. Karen Dishman, Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy, teamed up with former EVSC colleague Jean Neidig, a physical therapist, and Chelsea Clukey, the EVSC special education coordinator. “Our idea was to help USI students create things that would make the elementary school students more independent so they could participate in the games,” Dishman says. The more students with special needs can do themselves, says Neidig, the greater the benefit.
Dishman’s second-year OT students spent the summer brainstorming modified versions of Game Day activities and worked together to build them during the fall semester. After a practice run with an EVSC adaptive PE class, second-year students (who had a clinical on Game Day) handed over 10 creations—including a basketball catapult, frisbee launcher and giant matchbox car ramp—to their first-year counterparts for the real test.
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