Welcome to the Division of Rehabilitation Sciences
Rehabilitation Science, as defined by the Institute of Medicine, encompasses "basic and applied aspects of health services, social sciences, and engineering as they are related to restoring human functional capacity and improving a person's interaction with the surrounding environment.1 As such, Rehabilitation Science is by definition interdisciplinary and extends beyond the boundaries of traditional academic departments.
The Division of Rehabilitation Sciences is housed in
the School of Health Professions (SHP) and was created in 2001 to administratively support the PhD curriculum in Rehabilitation Sciences, which
is part of the Graduate Program in
Preventive Medicine and Community Health through the
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Since its inception, the division has evolved into much
more than just a support system for the curriculum.
Core
faculty,
who
conduct research related to disability and rehabilitation
and assist in the supervision of students and fellows,
currently includes thirty-two members from a range of
academic departments including occupational therapy,
physical therapy, internal medicine, geriatrics, surgery,
endocrinology, orthopedic surgery and rehabilitation, and
preventive medicine and community health.
Ten PhD degrees have been awarded to students completing the
rehabilitation sciences curriculum in the PMCH graduate
program since the first student was admitted in 2001.
Nineteen fellows have completed the rehabilitation sciences
postdoctoral research program, focusing on rehabilitation
and disability research.
In 2008,
the
UTMB Rehabilitation Sciences
Curriculum ranked among top 10 PhD programs in the nation
among kinesiology, exercise science, and rehabilitation
science (Chronicle of Higher Education).
Funded rehabilitation research activity has expanded
substantially over the past eight years and core faculty are
now involved in interdisciplinary rehabilitation and
disability research, with external grants totaling $4.3
million as principal investigators, and over 400 articles
published or in-press in refereed journals since 2001.
