In this episode, we talk to Dr. Luther King, Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy at Governors State University.  Dr. King shares his story finding the profession that became his true calling. We discuss the disproportionate gaps in race and ethnicity representation in occupational therapy and the efforts to expose middle and high school students to this healthcare career field. Dr. King also shares about exciting new initiatives at Governors State University to build a driver rehabilitation program to serve the Chicago Southland community.

Referenced in this podcast:

• Governors State University Department of Occupational Therapy - The Department of Occupational Therapy is dedicated to preparing the Occupational Therapists who will shape and lead the profession in the years to come. Our graduates are first and foremost Occupational Therapists, well-versed in the sciences and skills that enable clients to restore function and adapt to the new realities and limitations that follow life-altering events. The following programs are offered through our Department: Master of Occupational Therapy, MOT entry-level OT program. Doctor of Occupational Therapy, DrOT - post professional advanced degree.
• Illinois Occupational Therapy Association - The Illinois Occupational Therapy Association (ILOTA) is the official representative of the occupational therapy profession in the state of Illinois. ILOTA acknowledges and promotes professional excellence through a proactive, organized collaboration with occupational therapy personnel, the health care community, governmental agencies and consumers.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

occupational therapy, occupational therapist, talk, students, diversity, female, working, profession, impact, program, ot, driver rehabilitation, opportunity, expose, teaching, driver, high school

SPEAKERS

Amy Vujaklija, Luther King, Joi Patterson

people living longer, meaning that they're also living longer with conditions that can impact their occupational performance. So their ability to complete those things that we value every day.

Welcome to our podcast teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi. I am Dr. Amy Vujaklija, Director of educator preparation. And

I am Dr. Joi Patterson, Chief Diversity Officer. Our podcast addresses issues through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion, along with solutions for us to grow as educators.

So join us on our journey to become better teachers and leaders. So let's get into it. Hello, Dr. Joy. Hello, Dr.

Amy, I'm excited for this new academic year. One thing that I'm excited about is that we will take the podcast to radio sometime in this new academic year. So I am excited about that. And the other thing I'm excited about is how we're broadening for all of our listeners, we're really broadening who we bring to the table. And today is an example of how we broaden that. But one thing that I would say that we stay true to Amy, whether we're trying to or not, is that diversity, equity inclusion are always at the forefront of our conversation. So I'm looking for in going into this new season with you. I

am too. And when we think about teaching and learning, and we started out in season one, talking about teaching and learning theory versus practice, there's not really we discovered over a long stretch that it's theory and practice. And it's intention. And it's having students at the forefront. It's all of it. We also really talked about throughout several episodes in the first few seasons, that teaching and learning is for all educators very, very broadly defined.

Yep, yep. And even parents are educators. So I want to make sure that we throw that in there because that's our first job, right? And so there's something here for parents for students, administrators, researchers, all aspects of education. And

with this, when you mentioned broadening and really widening our net, it still comes back to our roles as educators like I'm an educator preparation. My role is directing programs that lead to classroom interactions. But we also have roles in professional development with teachers in the community with other educators and professionals. Today, I think we're tapping into something that doesn't get talked about enough. And it's exposure to different fields, different careers for our young ones, for our middle school students, elementary students to know what is possible. So that said, I'm excited to introduce Dr. Luther King, Dr. King earned his master of occupational therapy from Chicago State University and post professional doctorate in occupational therapy from Governor State University. In May of 2020, he returned to GSU and became an assistant professor in the Department of occupational therapy, and is an evolving instructor who believes in the pedagogy of caring. He is the faculty advisor for GSEs coalition of occupational therapy advocates for diversity. And this organization is a student led group, whose efforts focus on educating and promoting the value of diversity in occupational therapy. Dr. Luther King is also active in state and national organizations such as the Illinois Occupational Therapy Association, and the Association for driver rehabilitation specialist. Dr. King's research interests has revolved around driver rehabilitation, which has led to publications in peer reviewed journals and presentations at local and national conferences. Dr. Kane aspires to develop a community based driver rehabilitation program, affiliated with Governor State University to enhance community mobility IE for medically at risk drivers in the south Chicagoland area and beyond. So welcome to our podcast. Can we call you Luther?

Please do, please do.

Dr. Luther, how are you?

I'm pretty good. How about yourself?

I'm outstanding. And I know Dr. Amy, just read that fabulous bio, but to know you is to really know someone that is caring. And that is an activist about your field. And we were just talking about our audience and the broadness of our audience. And not only are you an occupational therapist, you are the ultimate educator. Thank you for being here. So I want to talk and and there's a reason that I'm asking this question because you are so unique, in many ways, to just share your journey about becoming an occupational therapist, and then becoming a faculty of occupational therapists.

Yeah, so I just think about my upbringing, call myself your typical 80s baby was born in 1982, primarily in the inner city, inner city of Chicago, primarily raised by my grandparents, mom, and dad, you know, around that time, we all know what's happening during that time, that impacted children. So I won't go too much into that. But you know, just growing up in an environment, being able to go to school, went to a magnet school, and I ended up had opportunity to go to a Catholic school for a little bit of time and for seventh eighth grade. And that kind of opened up my eyes to the importance of education, and then going into high school and being able to take those basic fundamental skills of math, reading science, and kind of do well in high school, well enough to be part of the National Honor Society. As a high school student, even though the background, you know, I kind of grew up in could have led me to other places. From that standpoint, I always, you know, want to know, knew that I wanted to go to school, I wanted to better myself that I know what I wanted to do know. So as a kid, my favorite thing to do at that time is a 1718 year old was to play video games, so wanted to college and you know, not really knowing what I wanted to do was like, Okay, well, maybe I can develop video games. So I ended up majoring in computer science. And the computer programming class took me out a couple of times. So I took that class and didn't want to give up. And then just found like, okay, you know, this is not for me, I can't see myself sitting in front of a computer all day and not interacting with people. So my other love is basketball. So I thought, well, maybe I can become a basketball coach. So I changed my major from computer science to physical education, because that was the typical route have become what I thought was the typical route to become a basketball coach. Well, I ended up talking to somebody randomly, and he was like, well, in the city of Chicago, if you want to be a basketball coach, you don't have to go to school. It just depends on who you know. So I'm like, Okay, I'm not gonna waste my time, you know, getting a degree and fee when it just depends on who I know. So I ended up going back to computer science, because I didn't want to feel like I was a failure. I didn't want to give up. So I ended up going back and taking a class and I pass it. But I still had that feeling of, you know, this is not, this is not what I want to do. So by this time, I think it was my junior year, and I'm like, I really need to figure it out. So at Chicago, I went to Chicago State University for my undergrad. And they had a course catalog, they had occupational therapy, I was kind of reviewing a game review on a catalog and I saw occupational therapy. I never knew what it was. But you said something that spoke to me, which was, you know, I knew that I wanted to help people. And this is a potential way that I could help people and I did a little research found that there's some creativity and how we help people. And then I went to talk to the chair at Chicago State, she's still the chair there. Dr. Listening, Roundtree, I want to spoke with her. And she kind of gave me some more information about the profession and kind of what I needed to do to get engaged there. I'll get into the program at Chicago State University. And that's kind of how you know how that journey started for me, just kind of falling into it. And when you talk to a lot of occupational therapists, if they weren't exposed at an early age, they'll tell you that they just kind of fell into it, but he just kind of found out about it randomly and, you know, found out more about it and which kind of drove him to become occupational therapists.

And what about becoming an educator?

Yeah, so that's a little bit different as I matriculated through the OT program and finished up, you know, passing my board exam and becoming a full fledged clinician. I primarily worked in a skilled nursing facility but also had you know, at that particular skilled nursing facility, I was able to do multiple things I was able to see inpatients I was able to do a little bit of outpatient. Also, during that time, did a little bit of home health here and there. So I had you know, kind of not not a full spectrum, but i semi full spectrum of occupational therapy services. And after being there for about eight years, I wanted to do something more so that facilitated me seeking out to go and earned my doctorate in occupational therapy. So I earned my Master's in occupational therapy at Chicago State University. And then I saw Dr. opportunities because in my mind what I wanted to do was just kind of free up some time by becoming a faculty member, at least that's what I thought it was at that time that I was going to have a bunch of free time. But we all know the truth about being a faculty member at a university level in terms of your time, but in my mind, at that time, I was thinking that I could maybe have some more time so I can pursue some entrepreneurial endeavors. So that's kind of how the idea of becoming a faculty member developed for me. But as I get opportunities, and one of those opportunities was provided to me, at Chicago State University in their Bachelor of Health Sciences program, where we go and do some adjunct teaching at night, it was a I think it was like intro to health professions or something like that. And that was really my first introduction to teaching. And, you know, I had the opportunity, most of my students were African American students, and being able to connect with them and knowing that my knowledge could impact you know, the trajectory of their careers. And that kind of just inspired more desire to find a full time faculty role.

I want to dig further into occupational therapy itself, occupational therapy, what is it? And I'm curious, how do you just stumble upon that in the catalog and say, hey, that's for me?

Well, you know, number one, a lot of people don't know what occupational therapy is, until they unfortunately have a loved one within them. Or they themselves have a medical incident that requires them to have occupational therapy. So when I tell somebody that I'm an occupational therapist, and all of our you know, our students would sit will say the same thing, you tell somebody, an occupational therapist, the first thing people tend to say, is that, oh, you help people find jobs. So a certain degree, they're correct. But you know, when we think about the word occupation is not necessarily a job, it's for occupational therapies is the skills for the job of living, you think about those things that we do everyday that we take for granted, whether that's being able to roll out the bed in the morning, put your clothes on, go to the bathroom, to wash your face, and brush your teeth, make yourself breakfast in the morning, they were getting a car and drive to work, the performance skills that are necessary to go to work and actually perform the job, whether that's having the muscle strength to open a door, to have a fine motor grass to write with a pencil to be able to sit and cognitively process, you know what's happening during this interview right now, those underlying factors that impact our abilities to do those things that we do every day, is pretty much what occupational therapists do. When someone has a, you know, injury, illness or disease that again, impacts our ability to do those things.

Right. And to be honest, I didn't know really the difference between physical therapy and occupational therapy until I had to experience it myself after a car accident. And so you're right, many of us, we don't really know what it entails, until we have to go through it. So I do want to ask you something because you are so unique. And this goes back to something you said earlier, when you were agile thing, you found yourself actually instructing many minorities, which I found strange, because I was reading a study. And here, let me just tell you a little bit about the abstractness that it says to gender, ethnic and racial diversity. AlTi professionals do not represent the diversity found in the population, and thus does not represent the diversity found in our patients and clients. Right. And you know, this and in order to carry out American Occupational Therapy Association vision to create a diverse workforce, and able to meet the needs of the society, because you know, you told us about that, too. So this is a study that examined the factors, and the influencing occupational therapist, and why it's so important to have diversity amongst occupational therapists. And then I looked at some of the data. And it was similar to what Amy and I see all the time in teacher preparation, where the population is growing in diversity, right. And yet, those that serve those that you know, are the instructors that's not growing in diversity. So it's not growing at the same rate, which you would anticipate and so like teaching, I see that from occupational therapist, Black and African American is only 4.3%, Hispanic and Latinos. 7.2%, also Asian 7.2%. But then you see that whites are Caucasians. That's like 85%. So again, Amy, it looks really similar, right, to what we see in teacher education. So my question to you is, how did you get here? I know you saw it in a catalog. But did you have a model or mentor that attracted you to this field? You're very rare. I just read the stats on this. And it also says something about females I believe. So the majority 93% of AlTi are females. So I mean, you're like a double minority in this field, and it's rare and it's wonderful. So I just want to know from that aspect, did you have a role model or mentor to get you to where you are now,

you know, I think about my time at Chicago State University, like the chair of the department was an African American female. There was another, say, another occupational therapist, faculty member at Chicago State University, who was, you know, also female. So I got a chance to see my first interaction with someone who's an occupational therapist was African American, however, they were female, you know. So it's Dr. Leslie Brown, she and I'm talking about Dr. Regina Smith, both are co faculty at Chicago State University. So I think of them as my mentors, I think of as a clinician, most of my all of my fieldwork instructors, when I was still a student and out doing my clinical practice, and getting my clinical practice experience were females, most of my colleagues and my first job were females. So I think about I've had a lot of, obviously, I've had a lot of mentorship, but no one that looked like me, you know, if that makes sense, you know, even my PT colleagues, you know, most of them were white female, I was maybe one African American male, Paul McCoy, who I worked with when I was a clinician, you know, so not a whole lot of diversity there. I will say, you know, majority of my mentors have not looked like me. And it makes me think about a story. When I was at a conference, I was a faculty member at the University of Florida, and I believe it was Salt Lake City, and I was coming out of a bathroom and somebody you know, I think it was another male ote stop me, he's like, he was like, You're a unicorn, like, you know, what are you talking about? He was like, you're African American, you're male, and you're an OT. So that, you know, initially that took me aback. And I really didn't know how to take that. But you know, over time, and even still to this day, I kind of reflect on that, just a little bit of that experience, and realize that I am a unicorn, whether it's here in the classroom, out in the political world, or so I'm working on developing this Java react program, this, there's really no one that looks like me. I mean, that can be a difficult thing to, to process, but also, it shows that I have value and that I, you know, have the opportunity to show other students the value that they can have in this profession, or other people value of this profession.

I would love to tap into that further, you're talking about just not having a lot of people are really in most of your career, someone who can be a mentor who looks like you. Let's talk about exposure. And you said about students being a model for your future, your students and your in future students in the program. Talk about why that exposure is so important. And really I want to ask, because a lot of our listeners are in that K 12. environment, how early should there be exposure to different career fields, and particularly occupational therapy.

Dr. Joi I mean, gave us a solid rationale for why it's important. Look at the percentages of African Americans in occupational therapy, that's a very, very small percentage compared to the patients that we see in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health, those kinds of things. And we know what that means to the outcomes of health. And well being when you don't see someone that looks like you're not working with someone who looks like you tend to not really want to participate, or you feel like you know, there's just an overall disconnection there. But when you're working with someone who, who you think has a similar background, or kind of shares, your same complexion, it's annoying to participate, you tend to want to connect, and I think that's a little bit of ethno centricity. And it's not a bad thing. But I think it's important for students, especially at an early age, to get exposed to the variety of career paths that are out there, especially in healthcare where people are living longer people living longer, meaning that they're also living longer with conditions that can impact their occupational performance. So their ability to complete those things that we value every day, but I gave him an example of myself where I didn't find out about occupational therapy until I was in college, you know, in my third year of college at that, so that tells you about the need to expose students to occupational therapy that tells us about what institutions need to do to expose students to occupational therapy, like everyone knows what a doctor and nurses but no one knows what an occupational therapist says, you know, and we have, it's an extremely valuable profession. So, you know, that's kind of why I do what I do. So part of my initiative here, along with being the advisor of the coalition of occupational therapy advocates for diversity is to just expose people to what OT is, number one, and to share that it's important that we have, you know, more minorities in this profession, primarily because of those those outcomes that I just spoke about. Yeah,

I do want you to elaborate a little bit more about why the diversity is important. I know when I'm looking for a doctor for my husband who doesn't like to go to the doctor. He really can't give all the reasons of why he doesn't want to go. But whenever I schedule an appointment with him, he's always do I have to go that female again, as I do, I have to go to that person again. So I took the time to really search for a doctor that I thought might be suitable for him someone that he would be comfortable with. Because it's important that he's able to share information, right? Otherwise, what's the point of going? I can't tell you how difficult it was trying to find someone. I said, the best that I could do was get a male who was a former athlete, I say, that's the best I could do for you. Because it was so difficult finding someone in diversity, and gender and all of these things that was a good match for him, someone that I felt that he could open up to, can you talk more about why diversity is so important, and the people that you touch, you know, because it's not just the physical condition that you're treating, right? It's also the psyche, and the social and emotional aspects that you're treating as well.

Sure and I'm glad you bring up the you know that we call it an occupational therapy, that psychosocial component, because our roots are in mental health and what we call psychosocial issues with that anybody that we come across as occupational therapists, no matter if they're just there for, you know, in a hospital for a knee replacement, that is something that's going to impact, you know, someone's psychosocial health and well being. So it's important to help facilitate that person's progress. And think facilitating a person's health process, by working with someone that looks like like you just gave an example, is really beneficial research states that we know that, you know, just by being in public, if we go to the lunch room, and there's a multitude of people there, we're more likely to sit with someone that looks like us. It's just again, that ethno Centricity and healthcare field brings about great outcomes, when you're working with someone that looks like you, when you're working with someone that comes from the same background as you, when you are working with someone, even though you know, maybe you were born and raised in a south suburbs, and you're working with someone who lives in inner city, understanding their environment. And this goes beyond just just racing this, this is having some cultural humility. And when you're working with someone, and if you're working with someone who is of the same background, so to speak, it just makes it easier, especially for us as occupational therapists. As we you know, we think about those cultural contexts. We think about, you know, the environment that this person is coming from, think about, again, some of those performance skills are impeding their ability to complete those those everyday activities that you know that we all really value, especially when we can't do them.

Before we segue into your passion, I would like to know more about what the work that you are doing in schools, what are some of your efforts to recruit students and to really expose younger ones to this career path.

As part of the Illinois Occupational Therapy Association, I'm part of the Community Engagement Committee, part of our role is going out to underserved communities and educating students of diverse backgrounds on occupational therapy. So that's part of where that come from that I'm also an advisor for Kota, which is our coalition of occupational therapy advocates for diversity. It's a student group here on campus, all of them are occupational therapy students. And part of that, again, you know, spreading that word of diversity is for us to go out. So we've been really focusing on high schools just because it's a little bit easier to get into high schools and just go into to talk with them about occupational therapy, no different than, you know, on some other folks come in and talk about their health careers, just expose the students to what the profession is, how they can earn a degree, the kind of financial situation that can be added by obtaining a degree in occupational therapy and working in the field, and just exposing them to the variety of different avenues that occupational therapy can can send them on, you know, occupational therapists who work with people from the NICU, so little babies, or who are coming from the NICU to the end of life. So if you think about that, you know, occupational therapists work with a variety of people in a variety of settings. And again, a big piece there's that there's that creativity, and uniqueness that you can bring when you're working with a client because we're a client centered profession. So it's all about what the client needs, where they're at and where they want to go.

How might a local high school reached out to get some professional exposure or like some kind of conversation with students? How might they do that? Um,

they can contact me at my email address, which is L King3 at govst.edu. That's one of the best ways to know but we've been actively reaching out to local high schools, such as Homer floss more, we have rich township nearby. I've my son's high school I've gone and presented there with by myself, as well as I've taken students, which is Richards High School, which is located in Oakland, Illinois, very diverse High School in terms of the the student population there. And we're also looking at trying to get into elementary schools because we think it's important to start there. start as early as we possibly can. In our Our you know, our student group is working on that, as well as the Illinois Occupational Therapy Association. Community Engagement Committee is working on that as well. Right.

And I'm so glad that you mentioned that age range, because I think that's going to spark some attention that you're not just dealing with one age of population, you're dealing with children all the way to our elderly population. And I think that's so important. Let's talk about some of your passion within the OT field, what gets you passionate? What are some of the things that you're working on? What are some of the things that you aspire to do?

Yes, um, my passion is driver rehabilitation. And what that is, is I work with people who are medically at risk. So you know, anyone who you know, suffered either an injury or illness has a disease, that's impacting their ability to operate a motor vehicle, they should be properly evaluated to make sure number one, they have the driver fitness, occupational therapy, we don't talk about driver safety, that's for like, you know, police officers, so on and so forth. So we think about it in terms of driver fitness, those underlying components that allow somebody to safely or to fit, we operate a motor motor vehicle. So that's making sure that they have you know, proper sensation, enough strength to turn the steering wheel, making sure they have good range of motion to access the accelerator and brake pedal, those kind of underlying things that we you know, that we need to operate a motor vehicle. So that's kind of what I do, I've had the opportunity to be a part of developing a Java rehab program at the University of Florida. I've done research in Java rehab with veterans. During my time in Florida, one of my biggest goals and initiatives is to develop a drug rehab program right here at Governor State University. And the biggest thing there is that there's nothing like it that can serve the community here in the south Chicagoland area, as well as Northwest Indiana, when we think about it, you know, if someone wants a wants to have a driving evaluated, they will have to go to North Chicago, either further Northwest Indiana for those kinds of services. So having something here centralized will be huge for the community. And not just in terms of driving. But in terms of community mobility. Everybody thinks of driving as you know, though, the sole means of getting from point A to point B, but that's not always the case, you know, there's a number of community resources, just in the south Chicagoland area that can help someone who can't drive, you know, get from point A to point B and still be able to engage in those activities of daily living that they enjoy. One of the biggest things about community mobility that we really don't talk about is that it can lead to isolation. And isolation is probably one of the biggest killers in the world, not being able to interact or not being able to engage with your community leaves folks feeling isolated, and that has significant impacts on someone's health and will be, yeah,

this is really life changing. You know, when you start talking about isolation, and I used to be able to do these things, I can't do that. And that causes depression, though, your work that you do is life changing, to be able to give people those skills back so that they can work, they can communicate, they can go places, it's just outstanding. So we thank you, this was a wealth of information, I certainly learned a lot. And I'm one of those that didn't know a lot about OT, because you don't know until you experience it. And as a young student, when you see people in the medical field, regardless of what they do, we put them into two classifications right, your nurse or a doctor. And we don't think about all the many classifications that you all hold, and the things that come with it. So thank you for going inside the schools and doing the recruitment. Thank you so much for that.

No problem. It's a pleasure, it's actually an honor to be able to do that. And again, you know, have some potential impact on the trajectory of somebody's life.

And so I'm wondering to what are some resources that two things that you need in order to get a driver rehabilitation program up and running in this affluent area? But to what are some resources that you might suggest for our listeners to learn more about OT or if schools are interested in having materials available for their students? Are there some specific places you would send them?

Yeah, and we will make sure we add them to our show notes, Dr. King?

Sure, sure. And I can definitely say I can send you some links and some additional information as well. You know, one of the biggest places you can go especially in the state of Illinois is the Illinois Occupational Therapy Association website, which is ILOT a.org. So you can go there and get as much information about occupational therapy within the state. But obviously, you can go to Gov State University's website and search, occupational therapy and you will find wonderful faculty here. This is a quick note that we're relaunching our post professional doctoral program, you know, in January, so we're actively pruning for that program, which is primarily for occupational therapists who already have a master's and are looking to attain a higher level degree, most universities, you will find our entry level doctoral programs. Our program is a master's program. However, whether you're an entry level doctorate student or your master's student, when you go out into the field, you're still going to be entry level. So a lot of students get that and accept, like, Oh, I'm gonna have a doctorate, I'm gonna make more money, I'm gonna be able to do, you know, a lot more than the master's level. And that's not true. And also, Governor State University is one of the least expensive universities for occupational therapist if you think about serving the underserved population. And this is a good place for those students to come and earn a degree while not paying too much for that degree.

And I'm hoping that you have the opportunity to use all the acreage that we have to build your program. Yes. So

you back to Dr. Amy's question. So one of the biggest resources that we need to develop a driver rehab program is a vehicle which would be you know, outfitted with valuator equipment. So you know, the first learn how to drive the instructor had a break on that side, I would definitely have that there's no way I would perform an evaluation without you know, having that instructor break up the population that I'm working with. And then there's, you know, that the equipment that goes into the car, other resources, our space, Governor State University is an ideal space, given a calendar given how the campus is set up for introducing someone to drive a rehab and taking them around the campus. First, before we go out to the residential, commercial and highway roads. Another thing that we're actively looking at getting is a driving simulator. So for those folks who we are working with, we're not fit to go behind the wheel, in our in complex traffic situations, are driving simulators a safe space to evaluate somebody's driving, you know, and those things can be pretty expensive. But we have a lot of support and acquiring a car as well as a driving simulator. And these things will open up. You know, we talked about creating opportunities for students, if you think about driver rehab as a specialty area of practice, there's not a lot of, you know, African Americans in driver rehab. So that's another opportunity to increase diversity in occupational therapy by exposing students to advanced or specialized areas of practice.

This is all so fantastic. I mean, we can't stress and emphasize enough that when you're working with someone, and you're servicing people who are looking at you trusting you, to help them sometimes that commonality, and you said complexion or gender can really build that foundation of trust at the very beginning. And it's such a field that requires trust and requires mutual benefit from each other, you know, you kind of learning and growing together. This has been fantastic. I'm so excited about all of the resources that you've shared with us and with our listeners, let's get excited about the future possibilities for the program that you're wanting to start with the driver rehabilitation and relaunching the program at GSU as well.

And I just want to make one one last point you brought up gender, right, so we talked about ot profession being primarily, you know, dominated by white females? Well, when it comes to males, you know, I was looking at the statistics as well, in terms of the age range of men and occupational therapy, and there is nothing listed, because there's not enough of us to even measure Oh, wow, the percentage in occupational therapy, so it's not just white female. It's just not a whole lot of men in this profession as well. Most male OTS has this thing we see each other we call each other Bro-Ts, because it's not a lot of us. I love it. Most occupational therapy because it's not a lot. So that's not just about the diversity, but also we think about gender diversity and gender and occupational therapy. This was really important as well.

Well, thank you for sharing. It sounds like you have your work cut out for you. You have a whole career worth a passion. So we're happy to have you here at Governors State University.

Thank you. So it's a privilege to be here.

Thank you for listening to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy. Visit our website at govst.edu/teaching and leading podcast to see the show notes from this episode.

We appreciate Governor State University's work behind the things to make publishing possible. Stay tuned for more episodes with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy