By Mary Beth Roach
Kirsten Nielsen is not only the program director for the physical therapist assistant program at Bryant & Stratton on James Street in Syracuse, she also founded the program in 2014.
Her job responsibilities, she said, are twofold, one being administrative and the other as an instructor.
She explained that as an administrator, she is responsible for the day-to-day management of the PTA program, including the hiring, coaching and mentoring of instructors; curriculum development; community networking; and the oversight of the school’s compliance with the accreditors, the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education. She also serves as the subject matter expert for the physical therapy program.
She had worked at Bryant & Stratton for five years as an adjunct instructor in its medical assisting program before creating the PTA program. That came about, she said, as a part of the college’s ongoing mission to expand to meet the needs in high-demand fields. One of those fields has been healthcare, and the school was interested in looking “to increase its offerings to students,” she said.
She considers being the founder and director of the program for the past 12 years as a top accomplishment.
“Taking something that didn’t exist and turning it into a successful program, in terms of designing curriculum, the lab space, the state and program approval — all of that has been my greatest achievement,” she said.
She has brought both clinical and educational experience to the post. She has also been an adjunct instructor at LeMoyne College and worked in the physical therapy program at Daemen University in Amherst. Licensed in 1992, she has worked predominantly in pediatrics, with adults with developmental disorders and in home care.
When she decided to go back to graduate school, she said she became graduate assistant and taught some courses within the anatomy department. Most of her life, she said, has been about finding opportunities and new interests when doors are unexpectedly open to her. This teaching experience was one of those doors.
“I didn’t have teaching on the horizon,” she said.
But she saw it as a great opportunity and decided to give it a try. It sparked her interest in teaching, she said.
“Once I fell into that, then every career choice I made was the ability to merge together teaching and clinical work, she said.
And merge she did. While in grad school, she worked weekends as a physical therapist and then after she finished her course of study, she continued to work in the field while she taught.
Her years in education have taught her that change is ever-present.
“I would say probably the biggest challenge coming into academia is how much it evolves. It’s not static. We’re always evolving to meet the needs of our students, to meet the enrollment needs, to meet the needs of the community,” she said.
The science of physical therapy is changing too, she pointed out, with research showing ways of treating patients that weren’t imagined 20 years ago.
Nielsen is also involved in community outreach efforts to augment current students’ coursework and to introduce potential new students to Bryant & Stratton and her program.
Toward that end, the school brings in guest speakers on various topics; she and her team take students out to different clinical settings, where they can work with physical therapists; she is a volunteer career coach with students nearby at Henninger High School who are interested in a healthcare career; and she works with students from OCM BOCES. She also hosts continuing education courses at the school and licensed physical therapists who come to campus and learn new techniques. These can draw people from all over the Northeast, she said. While there, they’ll also learn more about the college and hopefully share that information with others.
As Nielsen and her team prepare students for the job market, the outlook for that career field is quite promising. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment growth for PTAs to be between 16% and 22% through to 2034, making it one of the fastest-growing industries in the country.
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