Academic Programs
The American Physical Therapy Association has called on schools to raise the educational standards for practitioners, who will be expected to have doctorate degrees by 2020. The University of Dayton Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program enrolls 35 students per year.
The DPT program offers students the opportunity to earn a Ph.D. in Physical Therapy. Download the program brochure (pdf) >>
Program Requirements
- The program is delivered over three years in eight consecutive semesters.
- Students take 86 weeks of classes, including 38 weeks of four, full-time clinical rotations and a research capstone course leading to a professional presentation and/or publishable manuscript.
- A total of 80 hours of observation is required from at least two distinctly different physical therapy patient care settings. A minimum of 20 observation hours must be in an inpatient setting.
Much of the DPT curriculum is delivered through problem-based learning, which emphasizes professional decision-making and the use of critical analysis in problem solving.
Candidates for the program are required to have a bachelor's degree. Commonly, this degree is in pre-physical therapy or other related fields, such as exercise science, exercise physiology, biology, psychology, dietetics or chemistry.
