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Sophia Tavantzis, a candidate for a doctorate in Occupational Therapy from Russell Sage College, was inspired to become an OT while she worked as an aide at an outpatient rehabilitation clinic. The OTs always looked like they were having a good time, she said, and their patients had so much gratitude.
Those initial observations gave her high expectations for the profession — expectations that her first hands-on professional experience more than lived up to.
In August 2025, Tavantzis traveled to San Ignacio, Belize, with assistant professors and fieldwork coordinators Sarah Brockway, Ed.D., OTR/L and Holly Lockrow, OTD, OTR/L. The trip was with Therapy Abroad, which arranges service trips for health sciences students. Tavantzis completed her Level-I OT fieldwork, and Brockway and Lockrow served as licensed supervisors for OT students from across the U.S.
It’s been Brockway’s longtime goal to make international fieldwork placements available to Sage students. Tavantzis, who studied public health in Copenhagen as an undergrad, was eager to compare health systems again — this time while providing direct care. And Lockrow, who teaches pediatric OT, was inspired to join Tavantzis and Brockway as soon as she heard that they’d be working at Tykes Camp, a day program for elementary-aged children with diagnoses including ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, microcephaly, traumatic brain injury, and cerebral palsy.
The OT providers collaborated with speech therapy students and instructors to offer activities that targeted campers’ fine and gross motor skills, language and literacy, sensory processing, and more.
“That was really cool, to get to work together and decide what’s the best thing to do for this child that we can both see a benefit from,” said Tavantzis of working on an interprofessional team with speech therapy.
She described running a fine motor activity that involved campers using sponges to transfer water between vessels and a hopscotch activity that had the kids make different letter sounds on different squares.
Rehabilitative services like physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy are rare in Belize, and some of the kids’ disabilities prevented them from attending school, making these playful interactions with therapeutic value that much more meaningful, she said.
One moment in particular stayed with all the Tykes Camp counselors. An 8-year-old camper with multiple disabilities understood language but did not speak, and he crawled instead of walked. He had never been in a position to engage eye-to-eye with other kids, until, at Lockrow’s suggestion, a team of volunteers built him a walker out of PVC pipe.
Brockway described how the boy immediately began exploring his surroundings, interacting with others, and following directions. “We were able to see a different child when we got him upright,” she said.
“He can finally go to school,” added Tavantzis.
For Brockway, the PVC walker is also an important example of another hallmark of the profession: “That creativity piece, that’s one of OT’s superpowers,” she said.
Lockrow described the fieldwork experience at Tykes Camp as an enriched placement that offered much more than OT students usually get in a Level-I experience, from that interprofessional collaboration to the variety of diagnoses they encountered, to the hands-on assessments, treatments, planning, and documentation they contributed to. The students built professional skills, and San Ignacio is closer to having a sustainable and reliable source for rehabilitative services.
Brockway’s goal is to make similar trips more accessible to Russell Sage School of Health Sciences students completing fieldwork. It’s an effort consistent with Sage’s affiliation with the Okanagan Charter, which guides an international network of universities collaborating to promote global health.
Beyond these broader impacts for San Ignacio and Sage’s health sciences students, the Therapy Abroad trip was deeply meaningful for Tavantzis, who said getting her first taste of professional practice and observing her professors as practitioners were intertwined highlights. Lockrow often reminds her OT students to “find the shared joy” in their work with clients, and that’s exactly what Tavantzis experienced in Belize. It reminded her of what first drew her to OT — and confirmed she has chosen the right career.