Hello everyone! I am a part of the new cohort at IIOP which happens to be the first class of 24 students! I am originally from Ohio so moving to Florida was definitely a change, but I have been loving every second of it.
I wanted to start off by sharing something about myself I wondered all the time during undergrad: how did the people around me decide to go into their desired field and what lead them to where they are today? Personally, I found out about the Orthotics and Prosthetics field during quarantine in 2020 while I was finishing my Biomedical Engineering degree at The Ohio State University. I began researching Master’s Degrees with a BME degree and was not really finding anything that I thought would fit me. I wanted to find a profession where I could be crafty, work with my hands, design, and help change people’s lives. This led me to think of why I chose BME in the first place: to build artificial organs or artificial limbs. I did not know exactly how I could get to that point until I reached my junior year of college where I realized with the help of research and professors that there was a field dedicated to artificial limbs called “Orthotics and Prosthetics.” Once I discovered this, I quickly began researching all the orthotic and prosthetic fields in the Columbus, Ohio area so I could begin learning and seeing if this was the best fit for me. After the first day of shadowing a CPO I knew that this was the career for me. It included everything I wanted in my future profession: allowing me to work with my hands, being crafty, designing, and helping change people’s lives. From there all I had to do was type in “Master’s Programs” and a few clicks led me here to my beautiful school, IIOP in Tampa, Florida!
Our cohort started this fall on August 23, 2021. The classes we are in this semester involve Human Anatomy & Physiology, Applied Clinical Neuroanatomy, Introduction to Pathology, and Clinical Gait Analysis. Even though the course work seems slightly overwhelming right now, I know gaining all this invaluable information will be worth it down the road. I can already tell IIOP was the perfect place for me because the professors are so knowledgeable, helpful, and accommodating towards answering questions any time of the day with average response times of mere minutes… combine that with the palm trees and you just can’t beat it for grad school.
Until Next Time!
Alyssa Noe
