Undergraduate Rehabilitation Education and Accreditation: The Importance of Being Persistent

This article presents an overview of undergraduate rehabilitation education (URE) and the movement toward accreditation. Tracing the history of URE from the earliest days of rehabilitation education programs up to the present, this review discusses the purposes of URE, traditional URE program curricula, where URE graduates have been (and are being) employed, and the relationship between UREs and graduate rehabilitation counseling programs. The article also explains the development of URE curriculum and program standards, the development of a registry of qualified URE programs, and the transition to accreditation of URE programs in the United States. The purposes of accreditation are described, along with the advantages that accreditation offers to URE programs, their students, and to persons with disabilities

Short-Term Job Shadowing Experience Benefits for Undergraduate Rehabilitation Students

This study explored the subjective experiences of rehabilitation services undergraduate students in a short-term job shadowing experience. Experiential reflections of 61 undergraduate rehabilitation services students (females = 91 per cent, age range 18–22 for 77.5 per cent of sample) from a midsized state university in the USA with a brief job shadowing assignment were gathered utilising reflection journals and analysed through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Four interrelated themes emerged: encouragement to enter case management professions, field experience based definition of case management, appreciation of time management in case manager role, and application of related course material learned in the classroom. Results from the study suggest a brief job shadowing experience does improve students’ career exploration, understanding of aspects of a typical career for undergraduate rehabilitation graduates, and how to connect course material to the field

Short-Term Job Shadowing Experience Benefits for Undergraduate Rehabilitation Students

This study explored the subjective experiences of rehabilitation services undergraduate students in a short-term job shadowing experience. Experiential reflections of 61 undergraduate rehabilitation services students (females = 91 per cent, age range 18–22 for 77.5 per cent of sample) from a midsized state university in the USA with a brief job shadowing assignment were gathered utilising reflection journals and analysed through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Four interrelated themes emerged: encouragement to enter case management professions, field experience based definition of case management, appreciation of time management in case manager role, and application of related course material learned in the classroom. Results from the study suggest a brief job shadowing experience does improve students’ career exploration, understanding of aspects of a typical career for undergraduate rehabilitation graduates, and how to connect course material to the field