Education
BS Occupational Science, Ithaca College
MS Occupational Therapy, Ithaca College
PhD in Occupational Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Background
Professor Susie Agostine joined the faculty at Western New England University in 2024 as an Assistant Professor of Practice. Prior to this, Prof. Agostine worked as a research assistant in the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies at UNC-CH. Over the course of five years, she worked on three federally funded projects including Project Open, Building Bridges from Emergent to Conventional Literacy and Parents and Infants Engaged. She has also worked on one foundation funded project entitled Understanding Teaching and Learning Amount Children with Significant Disabilities. This involvement led to her first, first author publication (Agostine, Erickson & D’Ardenne, 2022). As a clinician, Prof. Agostine worked as a pediatric occupational therapist in early intervention and outpatient pediatrics. Prof. Agostine is an active member of AOTA and SSO-USA.
Prof. Agostine’s primary research interest focuses on children with complex needs who are non-symbolic communicators. Her dissertation was entitled: Relationship Building and Meaning Making: An Exploratory Study. This single-family case study explored how a specific young child with complex needs built relationship and made meaning with her parents across various contexts using a multi-modal data collection approach. She hopes to continue in this vein of research with the long-term goal of informing occupational therapy practitioners about the importance of building relationships with their clients and the importance of meaning making in occupation.
Further, Prof. Agostine has numerous publications and has presented her work at both national and international conferences. See below for further information. Prof. Agostine currently teaches the research series, OTD 525 & OTD 635, and the Infants & Young children class, OTD 547.
Publications
Agostine, S., Erickson, K., & D'Ardenne, C. (2022). Sensory experiences and children with severe disabilities: Impacts on learning. In A. Bailliard, B. Engel-Yeger, W. Dunn, C. Brown, (Eds.). Meaningful Participation and Sensory Processing (ch. 2). Frontiers. https://doi.org/10.3389/978-2-83250-588-5
Agostine, S., Erickson, K., & D’Ardenne, C. (2022). Sensory experiences and children with severe disabilities: Impacts on learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 875085. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.875085
Bailliard, A., Agostine, S., Bristol, S., & Syu, Y. (2022). From embodiment to emplacement: Toward understanding occupation as body-mind-environment. Journal of Occupational Science. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2022.2031261
Fulmer, E. F., & Makepeace, N.N. with Abbe, M., Apgar, S., Strongin, R., Giarratano, S., & Shields, S. (2015). “It's OK to laugh, right?”: Toward a pedagogy of critical race humor in multicultural education. Perspectives on Urban Education, 12(1), 38-53. https://www.urbanedjournal.org
Presentations
Agostine, S. (October, 2023). Persistence in Doing Together: A Mother and Daughter Establishing Shared Meaning. Society for the Study of Occupation: USA. St. Louis, MO.
Gullian, L., Agostine, S., Mitchell, S., Vaughn, R., Parkin, R., Li, Z., Kawabata, S., Oliver-Derry, K., (October, 2023). How do you know? Society for the Study of Occupation: USA. St. Louis, MO.
Bailliard, A., & Agostine, S. (August, 2022). The body, occupation and oppression: A justice perspective on sensory processing and embodiment. World Federation of Occupational Therapists International Congress. Paris, France.
Agostine, S. (February, 2022). Higher ed & OT: One therapist's experience in the pursuit of a PhD. Ithaca College Alumni Speaker Series. Online.
Bailliard, A., Agostine, S., Bristol, S., Syu, Y. (September 2021). Perspectives on embodiment: Implications for occupational science. Society for the Study of Occupation: USA Virtual Conference. Online.
Agostine, S. (June 2021) Relationship building, identity development and communication deficits: A single family case study. OT Summit of Scholars 2021, Online.
Fanning, L., Nader, D., Agostine, S. (January 2021). Including children with asd in faith-based community spaces. Division for Early Childhood’s 36th Annual Conference on Young Children with Special Needs & Their Families. Online.
Agostine, S., (November 2020). Research and Occupational Therapy. Invited guest lecture for OTA 2071: Community Practice. Online.
Bristol, S., Agostine, S., Dallman, A., Harrop, C., Crais, E., Baranek, G., & Watson, L. (March, 2020). Visual biases and attentional inflexibilities: An eye tracking study. American Occupational Therapy Association National Conference & Expo. Boston, MA. Canceled due to COVID.
Campi, E., Sideris, J., Holland, C., Sopkin, E., Chen,Y., Choi, E., Agostine, S., Bristol, S., Dallman, A., Wiles, A., Watson, L., Crais, E., Baranek, G. (March, 2020). Parenting stress and the association between clinically observed and parent reported sensory processing patterns. American Occupational Therapy Association National Conference & Expo. Boston, MA. Canceled due to COVID.
Giarratano, S. (March, 2016). Occupational therapists’ racial and ethnic attitudes: A replication study. OT Graduate Research Colloquium. Ithaca, NY
Fulmer, E.F., Makepeace, N.N., Giarratano, S., Guevara, K., & Tucker, A.J. (October, 2015). Breaking the tension: Towards a racial comedy pedagogy for multicultural education. National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME). New Orleans, LA.
Giarratano, S., Guevara, K., & Tucker, A.J. (April, 2015). The Race Comedy Project: The fine line between comedy and racism. James J. Whalen Academic Symposium. Ithaca, NY.
Fulmer, E.F., Makepeace, N.N., & Giarratano, S. (November, 2014). "Going too far?" Exploring race and humor in teacher education. National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME). Tucson, AZ.
