Laurette Olson PhD OTR/L FAOTA, is a  Professor in the Graduate Program in Occupational Therapy at Mercy College. She has been a pediatric occupational therapist for the past 30 years.   She teaches group process, courses related to child and adolescent occupational therapy practice, and also is the OT faculty liaison to the LEND Program at New York Medical College.  

            Before coming to Mercy College, Laurie worked as an occupational therapist in child and adolescent psychiatry at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center Westchester Division in White Plains, NY.  She was the Therapeutic Activities Program Coordinator for the Child and Adolescent Division for a number of years.  She instituted parent-child activity groups on the child and adolescent inpatient units as well as instituted parent-child groups in the local White Plains community and parent-child interventions on adult inpatient units.   

Laurie has consulted in the Mamaroneck Union School District  for 20 years.   She provides consultation for program development and supervision of occupational therapists in the Mamaroneck Public School District as well as leads the development and implementation of fine motor centers in all district kindergarten classes as well as occupational therapy response to intervention initiatives in the first, second and third grades.   Laurie has engaged Graduate OT students in collaborating with the occupational therapists at these sites to support ongoing program development through analysis of programmatic data.   She has presented on redesigning the role of the school-based occupational therapist to be consistent with the Response to Intervention public education model locally and nationally.   In 2011, she recently recorded the webinar, Response to Intervention: Understanding the Challenge and Transforming Your School-Based OT Practice.  It is available at http://ot-advantage.webex.com as well as on the New York State Occupational Therapy website at: http://nysota.org/v_professional_development.  

Laurie has written and presented extensively about a number of topics related to child and adolescent occupational therapy practice.  In 2006, her book, Activity groups in family centered treatment:  Psychiatric occupational therapy approaches for parents and children which was publishedbyHaworth Press.  Her social participation frame of reference was published in 2008 in the third edition of Frames of Reference for Pediatric Occupational Therapy.  In 2010, the chapter, Transition from School to Adult Life for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (Chapter 22) was published in the AOTA book, Autism:  A Comprehensive Occupational Therapy Approach (3^rded Laurie’s chapter,Development and implementation of groups to support social participation and mental health was published in the 2011 AOTA book, OccupationalTherapy’s Role in Promoting Mental Health and Social Participation in Children and Youth.  She recently finished recording a companion CD for the Transition from School to Adult Life for Students with ASD chapter.  It was published in  2012.   

Laurie was featured on the February 5, 2012 Fox News Health Segment, A Solution for Sensory Processing Disorders which highlights the role of a Therapeutic Listening Program in the occupational therapy intervention for a child with a sensory processing disorder.  The link to the video is: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/02/05/solution-for-sensory-disorders/ .

Over the past 23 years, Laurie has presented a numerous workshops locally and nationally.  At the 2011, national conference of the American Occupational Therapy Association, Laurie co-presented the short course, Embedding Yoga into a Special Needs Preschool Curriculum for Increasing Self-Regulation and Postural Control and was a presenter in the full day workshop for the Early Intervention and School Special Interest Section and Sensory Integration Special Interest Section:Using Sensory-Based Occupational Therapy Intervention Across Settings.   At the  2010 AOTA conference in Miami, she co-presented the 3 hour workshop, EmbeddingSchool-Based Occupational Therapy in RTI: Implementing a District-Wide Fine Motor Curriculum with Jennifer Freudenberg MS OTR, one of the occupational therapists in the Mamaroneck Union Free School District and a Mercy College Graduate OT alumnus.   At the 2010 World Congress of the World Federation of Occupational Therapy (WFOT) in Santiago, Chile, Laurie co-presented the Prime Poster,  Sensory Processing, Attention, Emotional Regulation and Learning:  All parents need to understand the connections-- Working with Spanish speaking parents in a Head Start Program in the United States  with Cynthia Martell MS OTR/L. Cynthia was  one of the Graduate OT students who worked with Laurie on developing parent –child groups at Head Start Centers in Westchester County.  At the Septemvber 2011 16th Annual Conference of Advancing School Mental Health in Charleston, North Carolina, Laurie presented the poster, Building Family Nights into a Low Income Culturally Diverse After-School Program to Support Child and Family Mental Health.  

Laurie is an active member of the New York Occupational Therapy Association and served as Westchester District Chair for a number of years.  She collaborated with Izel Obermeyer in developing a vision and then co-chairing the  2006 NYSOTA conference at the United Nations.  Laurie is also a member of the AOTA Work Group  on School Mental Health, as well as the Work Group on Response to Intervention. 

Education

PhD  Occupational Therapy,  New York University, NY, NY (2002)

Dissertation:  Interaction among participants in a parent-child activity group on a child inpatient unit

MA Occupational Therapy,  New York University, NY, NY (1980)

BA   Psychology,  Fairfield University, Fairfield, Ct  (1978)

Contact:

Laurette Olson PhD OTR/L

Professor

Graduate Program in Occupational Therapy

Mercy College

555 Broadway

Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522

LOlson@Mercy.edu

914-674-7816