Cherie Graves

Biography

Cherie Graves, PhD, OTR/L is an assistant professor and an occupational therapist who has been working in higher education since January 2014. She earned a PhD in Educational Leadership from the University of North Dakota in 2019, completing her dissertation work with a qualitative research study on student experiences on Level II fieldwork. She has practice experience in acute care, inpatient rehabilitation, home health, skilled nursing, occupational medicine, and outpatient adults. In the last ten years teaching at UND, she has advised more than 30 students in their graduate work, with six of these students presenting their work nationally at the AOTA Annual Conference. She has also published and presented nationally, regionally, and locally.

Philosophy of Teaching: 

My teaching philosophy is situated in constructivism and active learning. I believe that student learning is most effective when they have an intrinsic motivation and readiness for learning. Students need to know, hear, and understand why the content is important and how will they use it in their future. I believe that students learn best when they have opportunities to interact with the content using multisensory approaches including visually, auditorily, and kinesthetically. This may involve reading materials, listening to lectures, watching videos, participating in lab activities, etc. I’m a firm believer in peer assisted learning where students’ interact with the content and each other to co-construct knowledge.

I believe that self-reflection and feedback play a key role in student learning and is integral to the occupational therapy program. Students benefit from opportunities to reflect on their beliefs, values, strengths, areas of growth, technical skills, and performance. Opportunities for structured reflection with specific prompts is helpful to guide student reflection related to specific topics, while unstructured reflection is helpful to spur creativity and freedom of thought. In addition to reflection, positive and constructive feedback from faculty, peers, and fieldwork educators is critical for students to identify areas of strength and continued areas of growth. With their reflection and feedback, students can take action and create a plan with specific goals and strategies to support their continued development.

Lastly, I believe as educators we play an important role in fostering a love of learning and a curiosity for life in our students. To be an effective occupational therapist, it is necessary to be a life-long learner who provides best practice services to their clients, helping them to reach their desired occupational goals. As an educator I continue to learn how I can best support students in this venture while being cognizant of professional burnout that can occur from completing a rigorous graduate program. There is always more to learn and I hope to inspire students to share this viewpoint as they embark on their career as occupational therapists.