BEAVER, WV (WOAY) – New River Community and Technical College have been granted candidacy for a new Physical Therapist Assistant program, with the very first class starting this semester.
“For the past three years here at New River we’ve been developing the Physical Therapist Assistant program, and we received word a week ago that we are now a candidate for accreditation, which means that we can start taking students and training them to become Physical Therapist Assistants,” says Dr. Angela Strickland, the Physical Therapist Assistant Program Director at New River.
Developed to meet the need for physical therapists in Southern West Virginia, PTA is a two-year program where students can take their prerequisites at New River and then later apply to be selected into the program itself. And as it turns out, there’s nowhere else locally to take advantage of such a great opportunity.
“We are the only ones that are offering the Physical Therapist Assistant Program in our area, our college covers a nine-county footprint and the next closest place to receive this training is in Fairmont,” she says.
If you’re compassionate about caring for others and have the drive to further your knowledge, education, and skill, then there’s no better new opportunity like this.
“The luxury of being a Physical Therapist Assistant is that you get to take people at their worst and turn them into their best, your patients give you their hurts and their weaknesses, they come to you and trust you, and you get to rehabilitate them and teach them how to live their lives functionally again,” concludes Dr. Strickland.
The PTA program will consist of five semesters of general education courses followed by technical and clinical courses.
If you’re interested in enrolling in the new PTA program at New River, you can do so by going to newriver.edu, clicking on the “apply” button on the website, filling out the application, and selecting the physical therapist pathway to get started.
