Lou Powell, Certifiably Terrific
Professor Lou Powell tells her students about working with a young man who had just suffered a low-level spinal cord injury. As she talked to him about what he could do for recreation, although he'd had many activities that he'd loved doing, he was adamant that he couldn't do any of them now. But Powell kept listening to him and eventually learned that he was a member of the chess club. Powell said to him, "You can still play chess."
"He was stunned," says Powell. "Then the realization of what he could do began. As recreation therapists, we learn how to help that individual to do–whatever it is, there is no recipe. We begin to adapt equipment. The client says, 'I can't do this very well.' But if we tweak this, use a little Velcro and duct tape. Then, 'huh, that's not such a big issue anymore. But initially, individuals with disabilities can be so overwhelmed they believe they can’t do anything that they did before. And as therapists, first and foremost, we must listen."
As a recreation therapist and teacher, Powell has taught students how to take clients with disabilities well beyond chess to go water skiing, kayaking, biking, etc.
This spring Powell retired to focus on her own "re-creation." With characteristic enthusiasm, she's looking forward to being with her family; making furniture, fly fishing, and traveling. She will also remain vitally involved with the College.
A leadership curriculum
"The Department of Recreation Management and Policy would not be what it is today without Lou's contributions," says Professor Janet Sable, chair and longtime colleague. "She has shaped the college through her key role in dean search committees, strategic planning committees, tenure and promotion committees, and the mentoring of junior faculty. We will miss her senior leadership, her balance and good humor, and her thoughtful considerations in our faculty discussions. The hundreds of students that Lou has taught carry with them a bit of her spirit as they go out and touch those around them."
In 1981, Powell came to UNH to design the curriculum in therapeutic recreation. Now, 28 years later, the University is nationally known for its therapeutic recreation program. Powell has received the Therapeutic Recreation Outstanding Professional Award, New Hampshire Recreation and Park Society; and the UNH Therapeutic Recreation curriculum was awarded the Excellence in Education Award from the American Therapeutic Recreation Association.
Northeast Passage, the service branch of the Department of Recreation Management and Policy, employs six of Powell’s former students, including its founder and director, Jill Gravink. Founded in 1990, Northeast Passage is a nationally recognized leader in the provision of innovative therapeutic recreation services. It delivers disability-related health promotion and adapted sports programs throughout New England.
"I will miss Lou," says Gravink. "I have been dropping myself in a chair in her office to discuss problems and successes for the last 25 years. Lou has been for me a teacher, an adviser, a mentor, a colleague, a shoulder, and a cheerleader. My life would have been very different without her in it."
Looking back over her career, Powell reflects that teaching has been her greatest joy. Watching students develop into dynamic professionals who have transformed the profession has been rewarding. "I remember Jill asking ‘who am I as a therapist to tell someone with a disability what's good for them?'" recalls Powell. "Yet Jill has become someone, who, without question, has had some of the greatest positive influence on the lives of people with disabilities that I know."
Transforming the profession
Powell has been instrumental in obtaining nine major grants funded through the U.S. Department of Education/Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, ranging from awards of $125,000 to $900,000. All of them have great names that reflect a strength-based philosophy—Project Open Doors, Project SPIRIT (Special Education: Integrating Recreation into Teaching), Project TRUST (Therapeutic Recreation: Understanding and Supporting Teamwork), and Project TEAM (Transdisciplinary Education and Mentoring). Each grant meets key objectives and also aims to transform some aspect of the field.
"I'm a project person," says Powell cheerfully. "I love creating that new idea and just following it through. You start off with this bundle of papers and then, finally, you get funded. But after the exuberance wears off, you all ask each other: ‘OK, how do we make this happen?'"
Powell also served on the national board for certification of therapeutic recreation specialists and was instrumental in writing the rules for licensure.
As of July 2007, New Hampshire became one of three states nationally that has licensure for therapeutic recreation. This means that the field is listed specifically in the state health plan as an allied health profession. Powell, Gravink, and others at the University worked hard to pass SB305, which was signed by Governor Lynch. "My guiding force continues to be that the primary objective of licensure is to protect the consumer," says Powell. "And, if I go to a recreation therapist, I'm expecting real expertise. That therapist is not just teaching me the sport, but is helping me to realize some very specific goals." The acronym for certified therapeutic recreation specialist, licensed, is CTRS/L.
Next fall, Powell will return to the University as a professor emerita to teach an Inquiry course to first-year students, Taking the Dis Out of disAbility, and to assist with the college’s strategic planning.
--By Carrie Sherman
Link:
Department of Recreation Management and Policy http://www.chhs.unh.edu/rmp/