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Save the date for the 14th annual Spelbring Conference on Saturday, September 27rd, 2025.
Endowed Lecturer: TBA
Title: TBA
For more information about the conference, visit the Spelbring Lecture website
We hope to see you there!
History
The lectureship was named in honor of the late Dr. Spelbring, Professor Emeritus and former director of the Occupational Therapy Program, and was made possible by the efforts of a dedicated committee composed of alumni, faculty, students and friends of the program.
Lyla Spelbring
Lyla Spelbring, known as Spelly to her friends, was born and raised in Clinton, Illinois. At the age of 20, she knew she wanted to join the military. On her 21st birthday, November 10, 1943, Lyla joined the Marine Corps. As a member of the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, she was stationed in Hawaii and was selected for advanced training in the motor transport school. After six years in the Marine Corps, Lyla decided to use her GI Bill. She completed her bachelor’s degree in occupational therapy at Western Michigan University in 1951. Almost immediately after this, upon seeing a picture of a U.S. Army occupational therapist, she enlisted in the Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant implementing treatment programs for war veterans. Lyla served six years in the Marines and a total of 21 years in the Army during World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam War. She retired from the Army in 1982 with the rank of colonel.
She returned to Western Michigan University in 1959 to complete her master’s degree in education. While working as the director of the OT program in the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department at the University of Michigan Medical Center, Lyla began a Ph.D. program. She received her doctorate in medical care organization in 1981 from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation, “Loss and Resumption of Role Activities Following Stroke”, is still cited today. Lyla left U of M to begin a career in academia at Eastern Michigan University. From 1974–1984, she served as the director of the Occupational Therapy Program, the director of the Department of Associated Health Professions and interim dean of the College of Health and Human Services.
Lyla was the consummate professional. She lent her expertise to committees on the local, state and national levels. Wherever she served, she made a difference. Her work was acknowledged through numerous awards. Dr. Spelbring was named a Fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association in 1973, and in 1971 she received the Award of Merit. In 2002, Western Michigan University’s Department of Occupational Therapy inducted her into the Outstanding Alumni Academy.
In retirement, Lyla remained an active member of her community, engaging in meaningful occupations and spending time with friends and family. She loved genealogy and in 2010 she received the Lucy Mary Kellogg award from the Michigan Genealogical Council for her outstanding contributions. She also served as a volunteer driver for Livingston County Catholic Social Services. Until her death in 2011, Lyla pursued life with vigor and enthusiasm, and she remained true to her favorite saying: “Either lead, follow or get out of the way.”
Lectureship History
In 2010, an idea was born to create a lectureship in the OT program. Months later, a small group of occupational therapists with close ties to Lyla and to the OT program at EMU met with Dr. Spelbring to ask her permission to develop and name a lectureship in her honor. Lyla initially questioned if she was the right person for this honor but after discussion she consented to the use of her name and played an integral role in the conceptualization and development of the lectureship, the first endowed lectureship in the College of Health and Human Services.
The inaugural lecture was given in the Fall of 2011 and coincided with the 70th Anniversary of the OT program. In the years that followed, the lectureship grew into an all day conference with workshops held by expert practitioners, graduate student poster presentations, a Pi Theta Epsilon sponsored session designed specifically for students, and a private session for students with the endowed lecturer. These additions were made to support the vision of the lectureship as a financially accessible venue that would offer practitioners, faculty, and students rich educational opportunities designed to enhance quality in practice and promote leadership in the profession.
The Lyla M. Spelbring Endowed Lectureship and Conference celebrates the accomplishments of this exceptional woman, a visionary leader who was deeply committed to the profession of Occupational Therapy. The lectureship is awarded annually to a nationally or internationally known individual who epitomizes the exceptional qualities of dedicated leadership, scholarship and service and whose work results in stronger, more vibrant communities.
Keynote speakers from the past 5 years
To see more, visit the Spelbring Lecture website
Dr. Michael Iwama
"Like a River: Occupational Therapy’s Flow into the Postmodern Condition"
How relevant and powerful is occupational therapy in this contemporary age of information? Will occupational therapy continue to be relevant and responsive to the basic human interests for health and well-being in a world that feels like it is flowing in constant change and disruption? Is there still promise in our collective belief that occupational therapy can be one of the greatest ideas of this century? The questions of relevance are paramount as they are urgent; these questions must be thoughtfully addressed if this great profession is to flow powerfully and thrive into the 21st century.
The concern for culturally relevant occupational therapy does not begin with practice. Rather, it starts with the World views, ideas, philosophy, values, knowledge systems and (especially) theory that guide, explain and predict outcomes in our practice.
The World is changing rapidly; our worldviews, theory and methods bear the hallmarks of belief systems rooted in the Modern era. We have come to unquestionably embrace and even celebrate concepts of rationality, objectivity and assumption of universal truths. Intertwined in these structures is (social) power – how it is understood and exercised. The age of information; the faster access to and sharing of information and increasing reliance on technology and artificial intelligence, is hurtling us toward a condition in which rationality, objectivity and previously assumed universal truths and narratives become questioned, challenged and even rejected. The tsunami of digital social media continues to fuel the paradigm shift from modernism into the postmodern condition where the diversity of human experience and the multiplicity of perspectives become paramount. And power that is traditionally held and commandeered by the professional is progressively ceded to the client. How will occupational therapy respond and address this monumental paradigm shift?
The Kawa (Japanese for river) Model (Iwama M, 2006) is an early exemplar of occupational therapy’s shift from the Modern Era into the Postmodern Era. The Kawa model exemplifies how occupational therapy might begin to respond to the massive social shift occurring around us, and in the daily life experiences of the people and communities we serve.
Dr. Ellen S. Cohn ScD, OTR/L, FAOTA
"Listening In: What Matters to Families Matters"
Recently, leaders in the occupational therapy profession have challenged us to affirm the value of occupational therapy, to substantiate what we do, to interrogate systems and to focus on what most matters to clients. To collectively reflect on the call to action raised by these scholars, I will share my research that involved listening to children and families as they spoke about their experiences with occupational therapy. I plan to raise questions for us to consider as we evaluate the current state of our practice and our efforts to address what genuinely matters to families. This lecture will draw on the conceptual foundations of theories about family-centered care and provide examples from research literature and practitioner and client narratives to imagine possibilities for attending to what matters to families.
Renée R. Taylor, MA, PhD, LP
"Overcoming Therapeutic Impasses: The Intentional Relationship Model as an Evidence-based Practice Approach"
The objective of this presentation is to reflect upon the historical literature on the therapeutic relationship, identify areas of weakness in knowledge about use of self in occupational therapy, and describe a conceptual practice model that addresses the practical skills necessary for successful therapeutic relationships, even with the most difficult of clients. Two published research studies contributing to model development will be described. Findings from the first study of 568 occupational therapy practitioners suggest that many practitioners are under-educated about issues pertaining to the client-therapist relationship. Irrespective of practitioners’ age, sex, experience level, setting, treatment intensity, and client impairment, those who placed higher value on use of self and had more training related to the therapeutic use of self were more likely to report interpersonal difficulties in clients. They were also more likely to report feelings of positive regard for their clients. Similarly, practitioners placing higher value on the therapeutic relationship and use of self were more likely to report concerns about clients. The second study compared the use of different interpersonal styles (modes) across practitioners and found that the use of empathy was lower than other modes. A battery of empirically validated, brief assessments of mode use and client interpersonal characteristics will be presented for application in didactic and clinical fieldwork education settings. The author will argue that the intentional relationship model provides a theoretical foundation for brief assessment use and practice-based outcomes research in occupational therapy. Additionally, it provides new insight into problem-based and experiential educational approaches in this area. Finally, it may ultimately serve to improve clinical practices by providing new concepts and concrete, usable clinical skills to improve client-therapist relationships in occupational therapy.
Virginia Dickie, PhD, OTRL, FAOTA
"Finding Everyday and Extraordinary Therapy with Occupation"
People often regulate the ups and downs of their lives through their occupations. In an ethnography of contemporary quilt making I found that quilters used aspects of making quilts to give order to their days, deal with stressful situations, and respond to individual needs for challenge and new learning. They also made quilts to deal with extraordinary events and stresses, sometimes at a personal level but also as part of a collective. I describe particular qualities of quilt making that support its use as a sort of self-prescribed therapy and suggest how they might be found in other occupations. Finally, I propose the need to address the question of how people self-regulate: what they do “for themselves,” what occupations help them when they feel bored or stressed, and what helps them to respond to events beyond their control such as natural disasters and epidemics.
Wendy Wood Ph.D., OTR/L, FAOTA
"The Environment as a Therapeutic Instrument in Occupational Therapy: An Exploration through the Lens of Animal-assisted Interventions"
Systematic reviews produced by the Evidence-based Practice Project of the American Occupational Therapy Association verify that the research evidence supporting environment-based interventions is strong. But what are environment-based interventions? And what is the relationship of environment-based interventions to occupation-based practices? Are these two evidence-based practices essentially the same thing? If not, then does the presence of one imply that the other is likely operative as well? We will explore the meaning of environment-based interventions and its relationship to occupation-based practices in this lecture. To support this exploration, we will delve into the research literature on animal-assisted interventions, a treatment tool that is growing in popularity in occupational therapy and well beyond. Indeed, a plethora of published studies, reviews, and abstracts over the past five years suggest that occupational therapy practitioners are tapping the therapeutic power of animals to benefit people of nearly all ages, from toddlers to the oldest old. The incorporation of animals in occupational therapy has also been regarded as a promising, nonpharmacologic environment-based intervention. Accordingly, exploring this literature can help to elucidate the meaning of environment-based interventions in occupational therapy more broadly, as well as their precise relationship to occupational therapy’s distinct focus on everyday occupation.
Additional Information
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Conference and Lectureship
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