The Casualty of Home

Casualty of Home is a novel-in-stories focusing largely on the displacement felt due to situation or family. Often, members of a family have trouble making connections with each other, for each has its own thoughts, desires and expectations. Still, they have something rudimentary in common: blood. Because they are related, family members are inclined to care for individuals they might not even know, much less love. Spanning three generations, the characters in Casualty of Home deal with the constraints of family, the pressures of adolescence, and the limitations of the rural Southern culture in which they live. The characters face obstacles that force them to question their relationships to one another and their concept of self. These stories are inspired by the ones of my family— the characters draw upon the strongest attributes of my own relatives and their stories. By doing this, I hope to comment on the strength with which it sometimes takes to get through a day and how, sometimes, rebelling against circumstances can be done with just a word

Physical Therapy Service-learning in a Second World Country: What are the Benefits?

Social responsibility and service are key initiatives within the physical therapy profession and within the Lynchburg College Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program. Service-learning opportunities are offered in the DPT program within the country of St. Lucia on a yearly basis. The primary focus of this presentation is to evaluate the impact of this type of experiential learning on both students and the local community. During the 2018 service trip, the Minister of Special Education of St. Lucia provided special insight to our contribution to the special education schools in St. Lucia, which indicates the trip provides beneficial and sustaining services to an underserved population. On our most recent trip, we utilized our skills and learned new techniques for fitting adaptive equipment, using communication boards, and utilizing available equipment to treat our patients. In addition, we educated the teachers in the special needs schools on topics such as positioning of students and exercises that improved their learning environment. Our presentation will summarize the benefits of implementing physical therapy services in a second world country and we will discuss the benefits of applying our classroom curriculum to the special education patient population