Athletic Training Alumni Chapter

It’s hard to believe that Fall is nearly over, and that the winter holidays are right around the corner. We hope you received an email or the WCU Alumni Newsletter that informed you of the WCU AT Alumni Chapter Free Fall CEU opportunity, featuring WCU alumnus Scott Sheridan, MS, PT, ATC, CSCS; this presentation is scheduled for live on-line airing on Tuesday, November 18th from 11 AM – Noon (EST). A recording of this presentation also will be made available to all registrants after the presentation, so if you cannot make the live presentation, you still can earn your 1 CEU through viewing that recording (and of course, taking the brief quiz at the end). Scott, a former head athletic trainer for the Philadelphia Phillies and long-time athletic trainer for Professional Baseball and the Professional Baseball Umpires Association, will present Evaluation and Treatment of the Overhead Athlete. Register Here >>

The Executive Board of the AT Alumni Chapter met in late October to discuss the free CEU event, the AT Alumni Mentoring Program, and begin the discussions regarding social events at the EATA meeting in Boston in January and the NATA meeting in Philadelphia in June. Here are some highlights of the Board’s discussions.

AT Alumni Mentoring Program
Paula Sammarone Turocy (WCU AT ’82) handed the reins of the AT Alumni Mentoring Program over to Rebecca Novak (WCU AT ’15), a full-time clinical faculty member in the Athletic Training Program, in September. Rebecca plans to continue to advance the program and will be matching 2nd year AT students with mentors in late November. Her ultimate goal is to allow sufficient time for the mentor teams to meet before the start of the Spring semester and to have each team meet at least three times during the Spring semester. As done in past years, she hopes to provide the teams with prompting questions to guide their discussions.

Social Committee Report and Planning – EATA and NATA
Chaired by Madeline (Maddy) Shaw (WCU AT ’19) and Abigail (Abbie) Verbeke (WCU AT ’22) As determined by the WCU AT Chapter Executive Board, there will be less emphasis on social events at the EATA meeting when the NATA meeting is in a location that will foster greater attendance. Since NATA meeting is scheduled for Philadelphia this summer, and the EATA is in Boston in January, it was determined that any event scheduled for Boston would be unique and at “off times” from other scheduled social and educational events. Look for more information to come on this January event.
The Social Committee is just beginning the planning for the AT Alumni Chapter event during the NATA meeting in June in Philadelphia. They are looking for suggestions and assistance in organizing that event. If you are interested in helping or providing any other type of support for the event, please reach out to Maddy Shaw MSHAW2@WCUPA.EDU or via phone: 610-436-3289.

Program and Department Update
The WCU AT Alumni Chapter recently learned that the construction (breaking ground) on the Phillip B. Donley facility and renovations of AT classrooms and laboratories in the Sturzebecker Building has again been delayed, pushing the start of the project out to 2026. The AT Program students, faculty, and classrooms/labs will be relocated to other parts of campus during that project. No other information is available to the AT Alumni Chapter at this time.

Please check this website, Alumni Association publications, and any of our social media platforms often for updates. You can expect periodic emails from us that will be coming to you through the Alumni Association’s email: alumni@wcufoundation.org. For those of you who use Gmail, please save this email as a Contact, so that our correspondence with you through this system does not go directly into your SPAM folder. If you have ideas or suggestions for the Chapter leadership, you also can reach out to Jeff Frechette directly at Frechette.Jeff@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at an upcoming event! 

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