OT program named 1st in nation

photo of OT summer session
An occupational therapy class during the 2014 summer session.

Current and former students have voted Colorado State University’s Department of Occupational Therapy as the best in the country — again.

In the latest rankings by GraduatePrograms.com, CSU’s occupational therapy program beat out OT departments at Washington University in St. Louis (2nd), Boston University (9th), Columbia University (12th) and the University of Southern California (20th) for the top spot.

“We are honored to be ranked as the number one occupational therapy department in the nation,” said Robert Gotshall, interim head of the department. “Our students and alumni rank us through Graduateprograms.com, and this is the second year in a row that we have topped the list of 25 best occupational therapy programs in the nation. Now it is the responsibility of our faculty to maintain the educational quality that has inspired our students to rank us so highly.”

The professional program in the Department of Occupational Therapy — part of the College of Health and Human Sciences — long has been recognized as one of the nation’s best. U.S. News and World Report ranked the program No. 6 in the country in its 2014 survey.

Graduateprograms.com reaches current and recent graduate students through scholarship entries as well as social media platforms. The program rankings cover a period from Sept. 1, 2012 to Sept. 30, 2014. Graduateprograms.com assigns 15 ranking categories to each graduate program at each graduate school. Rankings cover a variety of student topics, such as academic competitiveness, career support, financial aid, and quality of network. For a given graduate program, rankings are determined by calculating the average score for each program based on the 15 ranking categories.

More information is available at www.graduateprograms.com/top-occupational-therapy.