Mission
Our mission is to develop autonomous, compassionate, and reflective physical therapists who deliver evidence-based care. We provide innovative educational opportunities in a collegial and inclusive environment. We value lifelong learning and are committed to excellence in teaching, clinical practice, scholarship, and service.
Vision
Our vision is to be a leader in physical therapy education, leveraging our diverse university, health system, and community relationships to provide the best return on investment for our physical therapy faculty and students.
Physical Therapy
Health Sciences Campus
Room 1304
987 St. Sebastian Way
Augusta, GA 30912
We believe that to provide the services necessary to meet the health care needs of society, physical therapists must be clinically competent, mature, self-directed, and lifelong learners who can function autonomously within a complex health care system and exhibit intellectual curiosity, openness, caring, and flexibility.
We believe that an educational program designed to develop physical therapists who meet the needs of society must reflect the views of individuals, communities, and society. We believe that physical therapists need to be open-minded, thoughtful individuals who can critically analyze ideas, understand human nature, and who have broad interests. General education has the potential for and is designed to develop these qualities in individuals.
We believe that professional education develops or enhances clinical competence, critical thinking, communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and the formulation of value systems consistent with the profession.
The two major components of the professional education curriculum are clinical and academic experiences. We believe that the two components should be planned and implemented to be interdependent and to reinforce one another. We believe that clinical competence can only be verified in the clinical setting. The academic setting is designed to provide information and theory base integrated and expanded in the clinical setting.
We believe the curriculum should be organized to integrate discrete subject matter concepts and stimulate problem solving, self-awareness, and promote personal leadership development. We believe that a curriculum designed around a competency-based approach and organized around case-based learning experiences is most effective and efficient. (Competency-based means that learning experiences and evaluation are organized around the major performance behaviors that must be exhibited by the learners at entry into the profession.) We believe that spiraling learning experiences throughout the curriculum enhances the acquisition, utilization, and retention of concepts and skills necessary for competent entry-level practice.
We believe that teaching and learning activities are interactive processes that require the active participation of both the teacher and learners. We value individuality and diversity in thought and experience and believe that a wide range of teaching methodologies should be utilized to meet the stated objectives of the learning experience.
The faculty believes that we are responsible for establishing acceptable performance levels within the scope of practice as defined by the profession. We are also responsible for evaluating learner performance and providing feedback regarding their performance. Evaluations should be used both as a teaching tool (informative evaluation) and a certifying tool (summative evaluation). The faculty believes that preliminary clinical competence should be evaluated across courses. A critical component of the evaluation process is self-evaluation, and it is the faculty's responsibility to facilitate the development of meaningful self-evaluation skills among the learners.
The faculty believes that we provide the learners with role models of scholarly practitioners, competent and up-to-date clinicians, researchers, and skillful educators. The faculty believes that we have the primary responsibility for establishing the learning environment in the classroom. The learners and the faculty share the responsibility for maintaining that environment. The faculty believes in balancing faculty obligations (professional, institutional, departmental, and personal) and availability to self, other faculty, and students. The control of that balance lies within the individual faculty member.
Learners have the ultimate responsibility for their own learning. This requires openness, making choices, accepting the consequences of those choices, soliciting, and providing constructive feedback/guidance, participating in experiences offered, evaluating their own experiences, and seeking help when needed. The qualities of the learners that the professional program will enhance or develop are professional competence, critical thinking, self-evaluation, self-reliance, sensitivity, clear communication, respect for self and others, lifelong learning, self-confidence, creativity, responsibility, accountability, caring, and curiosity.
As active participants and partners in the professional education experience, learners may be offered opportunities to participate in programmatic development, evaluation, and improvement within the Department.
