Faculty & Staff Story

I am a professor who teaches recreational therapy, but I equally see myself as a mentor to future RTs to help guide them into their vocations serving people with disabilities and chronic illnesses.”

Kaitlin is the Program Director of Therapeutic Recreation (Recreational Therapy) at Catawba. She teaches TR courses required for students to become national certified and state licensed recreational therapists after graduation. She helps students make decisions on their Clinical Experience (min-internship) and Senior Internship that will help direct their vocations as recreational therapists. This spring she has senior students on full-time internships in North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, and Utah.

She believes in experiential learning where each of her classes has a strong hands-on component. She says, “This allows students more opportunities to learn to serve disability populations through RT practice, often including disability populations coming into the classroom or field trips to regional sites to better see RT services in action!”

When she’s not teaching, Kaitlin enjoys exploring research topics that relate to healthy aging for older populations that will be included in Catawba's new Healthy Aging Center. The mission of this center is to provide innovative research, strategic resources, and best practice programs about healthy aging to the college, local, and regional communities. Kaitlin said, “Be on the lookout for more information about the Healthy Aging Center as it rolls out this Spring 2023 semester!”

Kaitlin considers one of her most outstanding achievements to be creating the Mueller Assessment of Transition (MAT), a standardized assessment that measures older adult's wellbeing when they transition into an assisted living home. She said, “I worked for years on this assessment during my doctorate work and to see the assessment finalized with excellent validity and strong reliability is very exciting! I hope to use this tool to help advance RT practice by giving recreational therapists another standardized assessment to use as part of their services to aging populations in assisted living homes and beyond!”

When asked why she chose Catawba, Kaitlin said, “The line in the mission statement that says, "rich in personal attention.” I am a professor who teaches recreational therapy, but I equally see myself as a mentor to future RTs to help guide them into their vocations serving people with disabilities and chronic illnesses.”