Profile for Tara Delong

Tara Delong, Jennifer Taylor and W. Thomas Means, all Recreation Management & Recreational Therapy, co-authored the article "RT Open Eagles: Answering the call for evidence-based practice" in American Journal of Recreation Therapy published on March 11 by Weston Medical Publishing. The development, implementation, and access to evidence-based practice (EBP) within the field of recreational therapy (RT) is of critical importance. Moreover, measuring the outcomes and efficacy of RT interventions and the establishment of EBP is paramount to the growth and success of the field as an allied healthcare profession. Resolving this deficiency has proven to be a difficult task for a variety of reasons. Considering this deficiency, and a need for a graduate curriculum redesign, the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UWL) designed an integrated capstone project to assess student learning while at the same time generating content for an open-access, web-based repository named RT Open Eagles.

Submitted on: Mar. 31

Canine Companions Facility Dog Rossi, UWL Health Science Interprofessional Research Center and Tara Delong, Recreation Management & Recreational Therapy, presented "Meet Dr. Wags" at What's New Wednesdays on Feb. 28 online. Motivation and support come in many forms, including a cold nose and a warm heart. Online attendees to this session met Tara DeLong and Facility Dog Rossi a.k.a. Dr. Wags, a four-legged friend who now joins college student clinical courses as part of preparing them to work with clients who have service animals.

Submitted on: Mar. 1

UWL Facility Dog Rossi, Health Science Interprofessional Research Center; and Tara Delong and Jennifer Taylor, both Recreation Management & Recreational Therapy; presented "A Facility Dog Webinar" at Linked Senior Interactive Event on Dec. 19, 2023 online. UWL Facility Dog Rossi, with a little help from Associate Teaching Professor DeLong and Dr. Taylor, presented to almost 500 activity directors during a Linked Senior live interactive webinar. The session informed activity professionals working in nursing homes about how a facility dog can be acquired for use in life enrichment as well as educational settings. This was Rossi's FIRST webinar!

Submitted on: Jan. 20

Tara Delong, Laura Schaffer and Jennifer Taylor, all Health Science Interprofessional Research Center; Kayley Ellis, Psychology student; and Emily Higgins and Elizabeth Neels, both Recreation Management & Therapeutic Recreation students; received the award for a research grant to support the Dr. Wags program from the National Council for Therapeutic Recreation Certification. Their $5,000 award will provide opportunities for individuals pursuing a career in or already practicing recreational therapy to establish and maintain lines of research, promote the collaboration between higher education faculty and practitioners, support the provision of quality recreational therapy services, and promote the CTRS® as the qualified provider of recreational therapy services.

Submitted on: Dec. 5, 2023

Tara Delong, Jennifer Taylor and W. Thomas Means, all Recreation Management & Therapeutic Recreation, presented "Pedagogy to Practitioner: Developing an Open-Access Evidence Based Recreational Therapy Curriculum Website" at The Academy of Leisure Science Conference; Theme: Leisure and Rights on Feb. 9 in New Orleans. This presentation provided a brief overview of the lack of evidence-based curriculum within the literature of therapeutic recreation and how this serves as a threat to the field as an allied healthcare profession. It further described the integrated curriculum for our therapeutic recreation dual degree students and the benchmarks for completion of an evidenced-based curriculum capstone, and provided a demo of the open-access website designed to share evidence-based work with practitioners in the field.

Submitted on: Feb. 13, 2023