Assistant Professor

Email: szimmer@medicine.nodeak.edu

Teaching:

Current teaching responsibilities include a two-course sequence addressing psychosocial aspects of occupational therapy for children, adolescents, young and maturing adults. In addition, I teach the introductory course in occupational therapy theory and co-teach the theory integration course for the on-line transitional masters program. I also advise Year 3 students as they develop their scholarly projects, including Casper students, GF students and more recently, on-line transitional masters students.

Faculty mentoring responsibilities include working with faculty in Casper, WY who teach the courses I teach, as well as mentoring local adjunct faculty teaching the gerontic occupational therapy course here in Grand Forks.

• Orientation to Occupational Therapy Theory
• Psychosocial Aspects of OT for Children, Adolescents & Young Adults
• Psychosocial Aspects of OT with the Maturing Adult
• Gerontic Occupational Therapy (Faculty Mentor)
• Integration of OT Theory (Co-taught for T-MOT Program)

Professional Interests:

I have long been interested in the development of community-based occupational therapy services for persons with mental illnesses and have assisted several students to complete scholarly projects related to this area of practice, as well as provided consultation to local non-profit organizations. As an educator, I am interested in the implementation and assessment of active learning techniques which are part of the transformative education movement. The CRISTAL Project has reaffirmed my interest in rural practice, especially interdisciplinary work with disadvantaged populations. As a doctoral student, I am particularly interested in self-directed learning strategies used by the practicing occupational therapist and hope to do my dissertation research in this area.