Nancy Krusen, Ph.D., OTR
Assistant Professor
Nancy has developed a wide range of educational and clinical skills in roughly 30 years of practice as an occupational therapist and educator. She has taught students at technical, professional and post-professional levels and is an innovator in on-line course development. As an evaluator for our national accreditation commission (ACOTE), she has developed skills in program evaluation that helps us assure our program is meeting its goals effectively. Nancy brings these experiences to the School of Occupational Therapy to teach a wide range of courses in the curriculum, in both the traditional residence and virtual classrooms where she loves to stimulate learning through highly interactive lecture-discussions and engaging learning activities.
Dr. Krusen’s research interests revolve primarily around students’ adaptation to challenges presented during fieldwork education. She is particularly interested in the student experience of a phenomenon that she has identified, called negative relative mastery (gaining mastery from fieldwork experiences that do not go as planned) and in the contribution of educators to support development of positive mastery. She has primarily used qualitative research methods to explore the concepts of the Occupational Adaptation frame of reference especially as applied to the professional development of occupational therapy students.
Nancy practices what she teaches about occupation – that a well-occupied life leads to health and life satisfaction. She has a wide range of leisure occupational pursuits including indoor and outdoor activities such as hiking, horseback riding, swimming, cooking, reading and music performance. This variety of interests supports her teaching about occupation and how to use it as a therapeutic agent in occupational therapy practice.
Education
Ph.D. (Occupational Therapy) Texas Woman’s University (2001)
MA (Occupational Therapy) Texas Woman’s University (1982)
BS (Occupational Therapy) Colorado State University (1979)