Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Curriculum Changes

We have some exciting changes happening with the PTA program curriculum. You can find the curriculum from the program website or in the college catalog, and it will show the new curriculum once the 2017-2018 catalog is published online.

The new curriculum goes into effect as of the fall semester, 2017. Students who have completed general education courses that met the prior curriculum will not have to take any additional courses. In other words, if you completed the general education coursework that was necessary to meet the requirements for previous versions of the curriculum/college catalog, you will still meet the requirements for the new curriculum. Students who are just starting to work on courses would work on coursework based on the new curriculum.

While there are several changes we want to point out a couple of significant improvements in the program.

First, the total number of credits in the degree/program will decrease from 73, to 65. This will streamline the program, reduce costs, and bring the program in line with current state of Ohio guidelines. 

Several changes in general education courses have been made. Two courses, College Composition II and Physics for the Allied Health Sciences, have been removed from the curriculum. The Math course, Technical Mathematics has been removed and been replaced by Statistics. Again though - if you already took those courses, you meet the

In the professional/technical coursework, a new course called Foundations of Physical Therapist Assisting has been developed to provide more in-depth preparatory skills for the professional courses. Several minor credit adjustments (both up and down) and changes in scheduling were made in other professional courses which over time had been found necessary.

Overall, the faculty, staff, administration and advisory committee are all extremely supportive of the changes and feel that the program will be even stronger as a result.