Georgia State University’s entry-level Doctor of Occupational Therapy degree program (OTD) has applied for accreditation and has been granted Candidacy Status by the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education, (ACOTE) of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), located at 6116 Executive Boulevard, Suite 200, North Bethesda, MD 20852-4929. ACOTE’s telephone number is 301-652-AOTA and their website is https://acoteonline.org/.

ACOTE in its decision for candidacy noted the following strengths of the program:

• The program resides in a major public university with diverse and consistently high quality students.
• The program has access to the resources of an urban national research university at an affordable state tuition.
• There is a strong suit of talented research and clinical faculty.
• The OTD program will be built upon the highly successful OTM program which has a 100% NBCOT pass rate and achieved an inaugural national ranking.
• The entry-level OTD program is now eligible to proceed to Step 2 of the Accreditation process, which includes submission of a self-study report due on November 1, 2022. This is followed by an On-Site Accreditation team visit in Fall 2023, with the goal of receiving formal accreditation before the first cohort of students graduate from the program. Programs must be granted Accreditation Status before its graduates are eligible to sit for the national certification examination for the occupational therapist administered by the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy (NBCOT). After successful completion of this exam, the individual will be an Occupational Therapist, Registered (OTR). In addition, all states require licensure in order to practice; however, state licenses are usually based on the results of the NBCOT Certification Examination. Note that a felony conviction may affect a graduate’s ability to sit for the NBCOT certification examination or attain state licensure.