Student Involvement in the Colorado APTA

The faculty at Regis strongly encourages leadership from its students because it knows that those who care enough to be the change they want to see move our profession forward. Rest assured that over the course of your time at Regis there are many opportunities, both formal and informal, to either try leadership for the first time or to grow your current skillset. One of those ways is to become involved in the Student Special Interest Group for the Colorado Chapter of the American Physical Therapy Association, (CO APTA sSIG for short).

I am the current 2016-2017 Chair of the CO APTA sSIG and a third year student in the Regis DPT program, and I would like to say something to those of you considering if the Regis DPT program is right for you, to the first years are who are about to embark on their first semester, and to the second years about to experience their first clinical rotation: you can do more than you think you can.

Running for a position on the CO APTA sSIG is an amazing way to broaden your perspective on what students of Physical Therapy, both Student Physical Therapists and Student Physical Therapist Assistants, are all about. The current board has 10 positions (http://coloradophysicaltherapists.org/student-sig/), and this year we are focusing on the following areas:

Creating a framework-for-action for the 2017-2018 sSIG
Growing student involvement with the APTA across the state through education and outreach
Building networking opportunities amongst students as well as between students and current professionals
Advocating for student issues at the state and federal level
Fundraising

With growing communication between APTA sSIGs across the nation, this is an exciting time to be involved. Aligning the sSIG with the CO APTA Chapter’s strategic plan provides a built in way to move forward, but there is plenty of room to grow new projects.

In the spring of 2017, we will be holding elections for the 2017-2018 CO APTA sSIG board. If you are interested in pushing yourself a little further, I encourage you to run for office, to use this as an opportunity to broaden your perspective beyond the next exam, and to begin shaping the future as a leader.