Meet Your Instructor:
Debora Sepich
EdD MBA at Doane University
Debora Sepich is an entrepreneur turned educator who has spent the last 15 years blurring the lines between the world of work and the halls of education. Debora is the Director of Graduate Business and Technology Programs at Doane University. Prior to working at Doane University, she founded Dolphin Software, an environmental health and safety software company focused on supporting pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and other highly regulated industries focus on protecting people, the planet while also making sustainable profits. Debora is delighted to be marrying her years of applied business experience with online education.
Meet Your Instructor:
Debora Sepich
EdD MBA at Doane University
Debora Sepich is an entrepreneur turned educator who has spent the last 15 years blurring the lines between the world of work and the halls of education. Debora is the Director of Graduate Business and Technology Programs at Doane University. Prior to working at Doane University, she founded Dolphin Software, an environmental health and safety software company focused on supporting pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and other highly regulated industries focus on protecting people, the planet while also making sustainable profits. Debora is delighted to be marrying her years of applied business experience with online education.
Meet Your Instructor:
Debora Sepich
EdD MBA at Doane University
Debora Sepich is an entrepreneur turned educator who has spent the last 15 years blurring the lines between the world of work and the halls of education. Debora is the Director of Graduate Business and Technology Programs at Doane University. Prior to working at Doane University, she founded Dolphin Software, an environmental health and safety software company focused on supporting pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and other highly regulated industries focus on protecting people, the planet while also making sustainable profits. Debora is delighted to be marrying her years of applied business experience with online education.
About This Course:
This health course will focus on the mental health issues of people with intellectual disability.
You will learn about the complexities of diagnosing mental health issues in people with intellectual disabilities and the types of disorders, assessments, screenings, and treatments used. There will also be a special focus on the legal and ethical complexities in health practice with patients who often require substituted consent.
This course is open to anyone, but will be of particular relevance to those in the field of advanced medical, allied health, and disability. It can also be used as workforce education for professionals who are interested in mental health.
What You’ll Learn:
- mental health issues and disorders
- mental health assessments and screenings
- challenging behaviors
- treatments
- legal and ethical issues
XSeries Program in Intellectual Disability Healthcare
Understand the barriers and enablers
Through My Eyes - Intellectual Disability Healthcare around the World
Well and Able - Improving the Physical Health of People with Intellectual Disability
Able-Minded - Mental Health and People with Intellectual Disability
Meet Your Instructors:
Nicholas Lennox
Nick is the former Director of the Queensland Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disability at the University of Queensland. He is a researcher, educator, advocate and clinician and has specialised in the health of adults with intellectual disability since 1992. He is trained in general practice, and has developed interventions to improve the health of people with intellectual disability.
Miriam Taylor
Miriam is the former Education Coordinator at the Queensland Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disability in the School of Medicine at the University of Queensland. She has a wealth of educational design experience for multi-users including people with intellectual disability, their families, disability organisations and health practitioners. Miriam has established an ongoing international collaboration with and is an invited contributor to the first World Disability Report for the World Health Organisation.
About This Course:
This health course will examine the specific physical health issues that affect people with an intellectual disability including, oral health, syndrome specific health issues, health communication, especially for non-verbal patients, sexual health, and interactions between tertiary and primary healthcare systems. There is a special section on complex care including issues associated with aging and spasticity, and the health impacts of epilepsy.
This course is open to anyone, but will be of particular relevance to those in the field of medical, allied health, and disability. It can also be used as workforce education for medical professionals in this field.
What You’ll Learn:
- common health conditions
- health assessments and health promotion
- oral health
- syndrome specific health issues
- complex care associated with aging, epilepsy and spasticity
XSeries Program in Intellectual Disability Healthcare
Understand the barriers and enablers
Through My Eyes - Intellectual Disability Healthcare around the World
Well and Able - Improving the Physical Health of People with Intellectual Disability
Able-Minded - Mental Health and People with Intellectual Disability
Meet Your Instructors:
Nicholas Lennox
Nick is the former Director of the Queensland Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disability at the University of Queensland. He is a researcher, educator, advocate and clinician and has specialised in the health of adults with intellectual disability since 1992. He is trained in general practice, and has developed interventions to improve the health of people with intellectual disability.
Miriam Taylor
Miriam is the former Education Coordinator at the Queensland Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disability in the School of Medicine at the University of Queensland. She has a wealth of educational design experience for multi-users including people with intellectual disability, their families, disability organisations and health practitioners. Miriam has established an ongoing international collaboration with and is an invited contributor to the first World Disability Report for the World Health Organisation.
Meet Your Instructor:
Andrea Hickerson
Director, School of Communication and Associate Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology
Andrea Hickerson, PhD, is the Director of the School of Communication at RIT and an Associate Professor of Journalism. She joined the RIT faculty in 2009, when RIT began its Journalism degree. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses including, Crafting the Message, Communication Law, and Reporting & Writing. She is the recipient of two grants related to journalism innovation from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In 2017 she was awarded a National Innovation Corps grant from the National Science Foundation related to entrepreneurship in publishing. In addition to her grant work on journalism innovation and education, Dr. Hickerson conducts research on journalism routines and political communication, specifically as they relate to immigrant and transnational communities. She also regularly contributes content to local media in Rochester, New York. Dr. Hickerson has a B.A. in Journalism and International Relations from Syracuse University; a M.A. in Journalism and an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin; and Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Washington.
Meet your instructor
Mike Johansson
Principal Lecturer, School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology
Mike Johansson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology where he teaches courses in Advertising, Public Relations and Social Media. He was one of three faculty who jointly developed RIT’s first 9-credit critical thinking class, “The Meaning of Things in Three Objects.” The initial offering of the class in Spring 2017 displayed measurable growth in students’ critical thinking skills over the 15-week course. Prior to joining the RIT faculty in 2009, Mike spent more than 25 years in media companies in the United States and abroad. He maintains a lifelong interest in critical thinking and problem solving and includes weekly exercises in his classes to encourage creative thinking. A mentor once noted “Mike doesn’t think outside the box, he doesn’t recognize that the box ever existed.” Mike received two fellowships to the Poynter Institute and also served as a Digital Journalism fellow at University of California, Berkeley. He has a master’s degree from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
Professional Certificate in Communication Skills
Take your communication skills to the next level
Storytelling in the Workplace
Public Speaking
Visual Presentation
Meet Your Instructor:
Ammina Kothari
Ammina Kothari is an Associate Professor in the School of
Communication at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where she is
also the Program Director for Communication and Media Technologies.
Professor Kothari teaches a variety of journalism and communication
classes, including Intro to Journalism, Mass Communications, and
Communication, Gender and Media.
Her research focuses on issues related to health, gender, technology
and religion that are situated within the contexts of global
communication, journalism and media studies. Some of her on-going
research projects include comparative analyses of global journalistic
practices within the context of emerging media platforms; how the media
conveys information based on the newsworthiness of the issue; and
exploring effective channels for message transmission based on topics
and target demographics. Professor Kothari was awarded an Emerging
Scholar grant from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication in January 2016 to support her research on how the British
media have been reporting on the refugee crisis. In 2013 and 2014, she
was awarded competitive grants to conduct fieldwork in Tanzania to
assess the feasibility of using short-message-system (SMS) to
communicate health information.
Professor Kothari was awarded two university-wide competitive
research fellowships in 2010 to conduct her fieldwork in Tanzania, which
involved interviews with journalists and leaders of NGOs. In addition to
interviews, she also conducted semiotic and content analyses of
newspaper texts, to examine how media representations contributed to the
social construction of HIV/AIDS.
Meet Your Instructor:
Keith B. Jenkins
Vice President & Associate Provost for Diversity & Inclusion at Rochester Institute of Technology
Whatever the arena—professionally, in family, in ministry or in community—Keith’s desire, first and foremost, is to serve. Dr. Keith B. Jenkins, Professor of Communication in the School of Communication, is the Vice President & Associate Provost for Diversity & Inclusion at Rochester Institute of Technology. Keith, a native of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, received his B.A. in Communication from the University of Arkansas and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Communication from the Florida State University. Since joining RIT in 1992 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Dr. Jenkins has also served as RIT Faculty-in-Residence (1993 – 1995), RIT’s first Assistant Provost for Diversity (1999 – 2002), Director of Undergraduate Degree Programs in the School of Communication (2011 – 2016), and Interim Vice President and Associate Provost, Division for Diversity & Inclusion (2016 – 2017). He was also privileged to establish RIT’s Multicultural Center for Academic Success and the School of Communication’s Journalism Degree program. Jenkins is the recipient of many awards. Among the RIT awards are the 2010 Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching, the 2005 Isaac L. Jordan Pluralism Award, the 2004 RIT Diversity Trailblazer Award, the 1993-94 Provost’s Excellence in Teaching Award, the 1996 and 1997 Higher Education Opportunity Program “Community Professor” awards which recognize a professor who has made a difference in the lives of HEOP students at RIT, and NTID’s (National Technical Institute for the Deaf) 1995 Pluralism Award. Jenkins’ scholarly publications and presentations center around studies in intercultural communication, political and visual rhetoric, and the rhetoric of gospel song. Most recently, the focus of his research has been on pragmatism and the rhetoric of inclusion in Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign
Professional Certificate in Communication Skills
Take your communication skills to the next level
Storytelling in the Workplace
Public Speaking
Visual Presentation
Meet Your Instructor:
Lori Marra
Senior Lecturer, School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology
After a 30-year career in Technical Communication and Interactive Multimedia management, Lori joined RIT’s School of Communication full time in 2013.
Professor Marra has a B.S. in Management from Nazareth College where she also double-minored in Philosophy and Studio Art. She also holds an MA in Philosophy from the University of Rochester. She focused on Stoic Ethics and her thesis is titled: The Mad Are All Unwise: The Practicality of Stoic Ethics. She teaches Communication, Public Speaking, and Technical Communication (with a focus on business communication for technical professionals). Lori is also an accomplished playwright and long-time member of the Dramatist Guild. She is advisor to the RIT Players, RIT’s theatre club and she is an artist in residence at MuCCC Theatre. For more on her playwriting career, visit her web site: lorimarra.com or follow her on Twitter @blueinkplayrite.
Professional Certificate in Communication Skills
Take your communication skills to the next level
Storytelling in the Workplace
Public Speaking
Visual Presentation
