WCTSMA Members

January 15, 2014

WCTSMA Members,

As all of you start to gear up for the upcoming WCTSMA State Symposium/Competition this year in Yakima, we would like to inform you of things to better prepare yourself and students for this year’s events. We have included the registration form and the tentative schedule is viewable on the website. We realize that students want time to interact in a fun environment and plan to have a social at the YMCAon Thursday evening along withactivities at the convention center on Friday nighthosted by your State Officers. All other forms and preparation materials for state can be viewed on the website.

Similar to last year, all 14 students on your varsity roster will have the ability fortheir written test scores to contribute towards your overall team score. Your 14 varsity sports medicine students will be made up of 5 testing categories: Oral/Practical, where the top 5 out of 6 scores on the oral practical and written tests will count towards your teams score. The next categories will have 2 participants where the top score is counted along with the top written test score: Anatomy/Physiology, Educational Program Admission Competition (EPAC), Medical Terminology, and CPR Skills. The minimum number of students you could bring would be 9 to receive a score in each category. This allows all of your varsity students a better ability to contribute to your overall team success and creates an even playing field for the JV exam and awards. The test preparation guidelines under Events & Activities/Test Standards are on the website along with all other test preparation instructions (there may be slight changes in materials or directions that will be posted when available). Last year we added the JV Quiz Bowl with great success and will continue this for up to 5 JV students from each school. The questions were derived from those sent in by instructors. Angela Bushmaker will again be putting questions together and needs you to send questions that you have in your first year programs along with answers. Please do this by February 1st.

We hope you have heard about our exciting partnership with Cramer to be the “Official supplier of Sports Medicine products for the state competition.” This partnership allows us to have quality supplies that are not year’s old adhesives.All Oral/Practical testing supplies from Cramer will then be put in 22 sling packs donated from MEDCO and given to top placing students yearly. This partnership will be ongoing and allows our association to give to those who have worked hard under your guidance and start their careers in medicine with a solid foundation.

The hotel registration info is now on the website and there are three choices that are balanced between quality, location, and offerings. They all include breakfast for your students. Please make sure to register under your school name as Larry will be managing the room blocks to ensure we serve our member’s needs. We may also contact you to verify need for number of rooms as some may register for too many initially and then cancel when not needed. This is not good for meeting our hotel block contract so please manage your room block according to your registration submitted. You must stay at the competition hotel(s) on Friday night in order to compete. We are working with the convention and visitor’sbureau along with the local Yakima AT’s and will provide you with food and entertainment information later.

To get a higher participation/response rate from schools we had asked for two student representatives and e-mails from each school with your membership. These two students would likely be your two student representatives for the Sports Medicine symposium meetings also. Larry has compiled those and this letter along with scholarship, instructor of the year, and other symposium information will also be sent to them. The state officers have also been working hard to promote our facebook & twitter @WCTSMA sites to get students more informed and involved.

The nearest due date is for student scholarships. Kathryn Yanuszeski is responsible for the collection and dissemination of these. We will again offer four $500 scholarshipsof which all money comes through fundraising and sources outside of your dues.The due date for receiving by e-mail or postmarked is February 14th! We are excited to be offering a post-secondary scholarship this year in combination with MEDCO that will go to a WCTSMA program graduate who is currently in an accredited ATEP program anywhere in the country. We will be finalizing the criteria and you will receive a specific e-mail along with it being posted on the website. The other criterion is that they must be a member of our Alumni Association. There is a new tab on our website to become a member at no cost. Besides keeping our alumni up to date on the happenings in the WCTSMA, its other purpose will be to track students through the post-secondary education process along with later in their career fields. We all have had students go into a variety of healthcare careers and this will provide more evidence about the importance of our programs at the high school level. This post-secondary scholarship will be $1,000 and similar in format to the NATA scholarships that they already apply for.

Instructor of the year nominations will again be completed by the students and submitted ahead of time for evaluation. This will take some assistance for specific information by you as the instructor. We all know that your students think that you’re the best and will advocate for you, we are again giving them this opportunity. The due date for instructor of the year will be April 1st.

All due dates for materials, unless otherwise noted, will be April 1st. Again, we want to stress that the WCTSMA is a state recognized CTSO, meaning that leadership is being reinforced throughout the year and is much more than just a competition. It’s embedded daily in our instruction and there are many opportunities for your students to take on leadership roles within your school and our association. The symposium gives your students many ways to model their leadership characteristics through student forum and poster presentations, individual testing, and student representative meetings. Please encourage your students to be active participants in these opportunities. Chris Hiatt has again worked tirelessly with our state officers and they have represented us tremendously at state officer training, WA-ACTE, WAVA, to OSPI leaders, to their fellow students at summer and winter leadership, and soon at legislative day on February 5th. Please encourage your students to apply for the state officer positions and President for the upcoming year. Applications are due April 11th.

The web page will be undergoing regular changes in the next 3 months, so please use this tool to better prepare yourself and students for the upcoming WCTSMA State Symposium/Competition. There are also updated frameworks for Sports Medicine along with Intro to Health Sciencesavailable. As instructors you will also be able to teach Anatomy/Physiology, Intro to Health Sciences & Personal Fitness under our currently approved V code 510709. While many of you were already doing this under the Sports Medicine CIP code, it is now a clean process through OSPI. Remember, many of you will have your frameworks rejected if the content does not match the CIP code. This info is available on the instructor’s page. Thank you for all that you do with your students and as always, please let us know how we can be of help.

See you soon,

WCTSMA BOD