DPT students learn through experience. Whether working on campus or immersing themselves in clinicals, Elon students continually reinforce classroom basics through patient interactions. For most DPT students, the desire to improve the lives of others and help the greater community extends beyond the required curriculum. Service learning and community outreach are longtime hallmarks of the Elon DPT program.
The Special Olympics are held in April on Elon's campus and DPT students work each year to ensure the participants enjoy a fulfilling, fun and safe day. The Special Olympics inspire athletes to set and achieve goals while building confidence in themselves and their abilities.
The Elon DPT program has a longstanding relationship with Wheels for the World, an organization that collects, refurbishes and distributes wheelchairs to people in developing countries. DPT students and faculty have traveled to Romania several times to distribute wheelchairs and help recipients learn to use them.
Through Wheels for the World more than 52,000 donated wheelchairs have been collected, refurbished and shipped to people in more than 100 countries.
During this camp, organized by faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill, each DPT student works one-on-one with a child for six hours each day, over the course of 10 days. The children have the hand and arm they prefer to use placed in a cast for those six hours, and the students work with the children on using the hand or arm not normally used due to the paralysis in that extremity. It’s been a great experience for Elon DPT students as well as the kids they work with.
October is National Physical Therapy Month, as well as National Walk-to-School month. To celebrate both occasions, Elon faculty and students created an exciting event. DPT students work with Title I elementary school kids to educate them about fun and fit ways to get to school, while at the same time to also raise community awareness about the need to create “safe walking and cycling routes to school” for children. This program began two years ago, and has received a grant to increase community awareness about physical therapy from the American Physical Therapy Association. This year, Elon will coordinate this event in at least three elemen
tary schools across North Carolina!
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