Kristie Patten is a former alumna who graduated from the Elizabethtown College Occupational Therapy (OT) program in 1987. Etown OT Department chair Tamera Humbert quoted in an interview “Yes, Dr. Patten is very well known to us.”
She has most definitely left an impact on the College. She was recently honored with the highest award that can be given to an occupational therapist, the Eleanor Clarke Slagle Lectureship Award, for her work regarding reshaping the therapy for children with autism. Patten will be honored and present a lecture at the AOTA INSPIRE 2022 conference next April.
After graduating from Etown, Patten started a job at Athens Regional Medical Center where she worked at a pediatric practice. She came back north a year later and began to work in a school with children with autism. Patten began to work towards her master’s degree at Temple University, where she took a job as the field work coordinator. While at Temple, she worked towards her doctorate in education psychology.
Patten and a colleague at Temple were given a grant to work with autistic adults. This is where Patten’s mindset shifted about OT, and she began to stop trying to fix and cure things in autistic individuals that didn’t need to be fixed.
“No one was talking to autistic adults, we were treating them but not listening to them,” Patten said.
Patten began to look at a different model for treating people with autism, as they did not need to be taught how to act less like themselves.
Patten began to present on reshaping the therapy for autistic people and even had a TEDx titled “I Was Wrong” where she explains how she lacked empathy and was working with a deficit-based model to treat people. Patten began to focus on being an ally to people with autism and helping them to advocate for themselves. Today Patten is a resident of New York and is the Vice Dean of Academic Affairs as well as the associate professor of occupational therapy at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.
The Eleanor Clarke Slagle Lectureship Award was awarded to Patten after she was nominated by her colleagues for her work with how she is reshaping therapy for people with autism. Patten will give a lecture at the AOTA INSPIRE conference when she receives this award, that focuses on how the model for treating people with autism is being changed.
Patten is also the principal investigator of one of the largest inclusion programs that is grant- funded. This program, called ASD Nest Program, is a program for students with autism to have more inclusive classrooms so they can have an authentic learning experience. This program is currently implanted in 54 K-12 schools across the entire country and serves over 1,600 autistic students. This program is also to be expanded internationally.
Patten is also credited with working with NYU Connect for autistic students. She worked on helping these students to recognize where they need support and helping and becoming an advocate instead of trying to teach normalcy. This is a very different model from what has been used in the past, as these autistic students are not being taught how to act like others, but to instead advocate for what they need to be themselves.
Patten’s entire career started at Etown, and it rolled into something bigger every step of the way. Now she is known for reframing the therapy for people with autism and Etown will be here to cheer her on!
