Athletic Training Alumni Chapter

Happy Holidays to all you Golden Rams!! We were so excited to “kick off” our Chapter’s work by offering an outstanding free CEU event on November 28th featuring noted expert and WCU Associate Professor, Dr. Lindsey Keenan with a virtual presentation on the topic “Navigating Mental Health Screening in Student Athletes: A Review of Best Practices”. We had 296 registrants, with 205 ATs joining us “live” for the session. A recorded version of Dr. Keenan’s presentation is available to those who registered for the event, but you must view the presentation and complete the surveys soon to be eligible to earn the 1 CEU for this BOC reporting cycle.

Thank you to those who completed our AT Alumni Survey; we have used your feedback to create our Chapter’s initiatives for 2023-2024. The majority of respondents were interested in CEU opportunities provided both virtually and “live” on campus. We hope to build on the momentum from our Fall CEU programming to offer a “live” and recorded CEU program in Spring 2024 in coordination with the WCU AT Annual Golf Outing and a social event of some type. Please look for more information on these opportunities in the new year. If you have expertise in the evaluation and management of patients/athletes with concussion or mental health concerns, or are expert in best practices in alternative practice settings or AT administration, please consider being a speaker for our spring event. Contact Jeff Frechette, President of the AT Alumni Chapter, Frechette.Jeff@gmail.com with your interest in being a presenter.

Our second initiative is the development of a mentoring program. This program will “roll out” in two phases. The first phase creating a structured mentoring program that will match AT alums who indicated a desire to serve as mentors with the upcoming graduating class of AT masters students. Phase 1 will be implemented during the spring academic semester, with the next phase (AT alums helping AT alums) of the program rolling out over the summer and fall 2024. Look for more information on the mentoring program coming soon.

Finally, our third initiative is to have some informal social gatherings – in coordination with CEU events and during the NATA meeting. This year’s NATA meeting is scheduled for June 25-28 in New Orleans, so look for more information on the WCU Alumni Social sometime during the spring. If you live or work in New Orleans and have some ideas for a location near the convention center for our social, please reach out to Jeff Frechette with those suggestions.

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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