It’s the first day of the spring semester for University of Evansville (UE) Doctor of Physical Therapy students.
They’ve just opened their mysterious activity box at the Stone Family Center for Health Sciences, at the direction of Dr. Bethany Huebner, program department chair.
“Their goal at the end of this is to be able to fully assess and treat patients with musculoskeletal disorders,” Huebner said. “They have to do an activity at each step of the box, and it's about developing their critical thinking, their problem solving skills.”
At the end of the course they’ll re-take the same activity to track their progress.
Kadesha Alawar-Taylor and her group are discussing what tests they’d run on their patient based on the information provided from the box.
“Specifically for the region that the patient is experiencing the impairment,” she said. “So that's what we're discussing right now, what we think would be the appropriate evaluation to assess the patient.”
The doctor of physical therapy program is of course a post- graduate degree. It usually costs more than $100,000.
But under new federal guidelines proposed in November, the degree is reclassified as a “graduate” degree and is no longer explicitly labeled a “professional” degree — changing funding limits for students.
“That is going to be problematic for most of physical therapy education,” Huebner said. “Because again, it's seven years. And so you have four years of undergrad and then three years of graduate school.”
Students of such programs will be limited to $100,000 of federal borrowing total. This degree at U E costs around $128,000.
And it’s not just this degree. Such funding gaps are where smaller family-based endowment scholarships can help.
UE recently announced a new $50,000 gift from the Bailey Family earmarked for health sciences students.
Abigail Werling is vice present of University Advancement.
“Endowed scholarships often provide that multi-year support which gives students the confidence that when they start their journey at the university, that they'll be able to finish,” Werling said.
She said in 2025, nearly $3 million was awarded to students via named scholarships; 97-percent are receiving some type of scholarship aid.
The University of Southern Indiana also recently announced a new endowment — $1 million from Larry Rutledge for the Family Nurse Practitioner or Acute Care Nurse Practitioner programs within the Master of Science in Nursing program.
In general, universities invest these financial gifts and pay out the earnings annually. On average, UE students received about $4,500 from named scholarships last year, Werling said.
Back at the Stone Family Center, student Marleigh Reynolds is taking notes for her group on a standing dry erase board.
She agrees that a variety of funding sources, including named scholarships, are vital to affordability.
“Our profession (is) going to be used so heavily in the future, and a doctoral program is not necessarily cheap,” she said. “So being able to have financial aid — whether it's extra loans, scholarship, grant opportunities, would really impact a lot of us in various ways.”
Huebner said such endowment scholarships are "vitally important," and provide chances for students “who may have had the dream, but not really had the financial backing to do so” — whether physician assistant, or nurse anesthetist.
Examples of degrees still labeled as "professional" by the USDOE:
Pharmacy (Pharm.D);
Dentistry (DOS, D.MD);
Veterinary Medicine (DVM);
Chiropractic Medicine (DC, DCM);
Law (LLM, JD);
Medicine (MD);
Optometry (OD);
Osteopathic Medicine (DO);
Podiatry (DPM, DP, Pod.D); and
Theology (M.Div, MHL).
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