ATRA San Antonio : 2025 Session Descriptions

Gena Bell Vargas, PhD, CTRS, is the MSRT Program Director and an Associate Professor of Instruction in the RT program at Temple University. Her clinical background includes an urban acute psychiatric inpatient setting working with people experiencing symptoms of depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, as well an inpatient physical rehabilitation with persons that have experienced strokes, TBIs, SCIs, and amputations. Recently, Gena has been getting back into the world of adventure programming, while also pursuing the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Bryan McCormick is a professor in the Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences in the College of Public Health at Temple University and a Principal Investigator with the Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion. Dr. McCormick is a past president of the American Therapeutic Recreation Association and is a fellow in the Academy of Leisure Sciences and the National Academy of Recreational Therapists. He is the author or co-author of over 90 peer-reviewed publications, more than 60 published research abstracts, 5 books and 22 book chapters. Dr. McCormick’s recent work has been published in Community Mental Health Journal, Mental Health and Physical Activity, Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, and Therapeutic Recreation Journal. He is the principal investigator of the project Being Needed: Building Social Connections that Matter to Reduce Social Isolation and Loneliness (90DPCP0011-01-00) funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. This work is focused on identifying risk and protective factors for social isolation and loneliness among community-living adults with serious mental illness, as well as developing and testing interventions. He is a two-time recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research and provide lectures on psychiatric services in Serbia (2010) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (2017). Dr. McCormick has provided trainings in the US and internationally on the use of recreation as a form of psychosocial intervention in psychiatric rehabilitation. His teaching focuses on recreational therapy in psychiatric rehabilitation, and intervention research methods.

Aurora Verlin is an Instructor and Undergraduate Program Director at Temple University. She is also currently the Past President of the Recreational Therapy Foundation and previously served as President and Member at Large for Research Grants, for which she reviewed all grant applications that came into the Foundation. Prior to working in academia, Aurora worked with older adults with dementia in a Life Care Community in the Philadelphia area, where she was the Director of Recreational Therapy Services and Personal Care Home Administrator. She used evidence-based practice to build her program and department's budget and staffing numbers, and to educate staff, residents and the local community on the benefits of recreational therapy. At Temple University, Aurora has served on the conference committee for the Evidence-Based Practice Conference for many years.