The Department of Occupational Therapy will offer a new minor this fall in occupational science. The program, which will be open to all majors, will teach students about the relationship between a person’s environment and his or her occupation.

Melinda Cozzolino, associate professor of occupational therapy, was one of several people that worked on developing the minor this past year. Cozzolino said understanding the connection between our environment and what we do on a daily basis is important because our occupations help define who we are.

“Everything we do, from combing our hair to cooking dinner to going to work every day, are all considered occupations, and they have different meanings for different people,” Cozzolino said.

At the end of last spring, Cozzolino said, she and Steve Siconolfi, dean of the School of Heath Sciences and Human Performance,  and Diane Long, then the interim chair of the department, discussed ways to improve the department’s visibility on campus. They decided to extract the core courses from the occupational science major and develop a minor that would benefit students across multiple programs.

Students will be able to take all 18 required credits within the occupational therapy department but will have the option of taking courses from three other departments — psychology, sociology and recreational and leisure studies. These departments were also involved in developing the course curriculum, Cozzolino said.

The courses required for the minor will examine how occupations affect people throughout their lifespan, as well as how culture can affect a person’s work environment.

“If we can have a better understanding of the occupations that are important to people and the meaning behind them, we’re going to be able to better understand that person as a social being,” Cozzolino said.

Cozzolino said she worked with several different departments on campus to design a minor that would be beneficial to many students. Understanding how disabilities, disease and culture affect a person’s daily activities will be beneficial to the allied health professions, psychologists and educators, she said.

“Any of those human service fields would really benefit from this minor,” she said.

Carole Dennis, associate professor and chair of the department, said mixing students from different disciplines will increase the intellectual diversity within the classroom, creating a “richer experience” for students from different majors.

Julia Dorsey, assistant professor of occupational therapy, agreed and said having students from outside the occupational science major in her classes would help bring different perspectives into the classroom.

“It was so amazing to have students who think totally differently,” Dorsey said. “It really brought a lot of diversity to the class. I thought that they just had such a different perspective on things … and I think the students learned a lot from that.”

Dorsey said she tries to balance lectures with hands-on activities in her Occupation and You class, a required course for the minor. For the first seven weeks of this semester, her students worked with older adults from Longview Senior Center. For three of those weeks, students learned that limitations, such as poor vision, could hinder certain activities, such as scrap booking or photography, Dorsey said.

“They really got it,” Dorsey said. “They [said], ‘OK, here’s what we’re learning about in class, and what we’re learning about in our textbook really shows that the person is depressed because they have arthritis and they can’t do the things that they want

to do.”

Dennis said a person’s gender, sexuality, education and training could also limit their occupations.

“There are many people who can’t do those things that are important to them based on some factor within their culture,” Dennis said.

Katie Cooper, a graduate student majoring in occupational science and occupational therapy, took a two-week Health Care and Culture elective in the Dominican Republic during the summer of 2006. While taking the one-credit course, which will also be offered to minors, Cooper said she learned how economic disparities affected the livelihood of Dominicans.

“We basically got to see everything from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high,” Cooper said.

Through International Child Care, a health development organization operating in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Cooper worked with children and families to help them cope with disabilities.

The course and the department allowed her to understand the difficulties people faced and how she could improve their lives, she said.

“It’s really just helping people adapt to what they have and living their lives to the fullest,” she said.