By Jill Pease
Kay Walker, Ph.D., OTR/L, who inspired generations of occupational therapy students, practitioners and leaders, passed away August 5, 2024, in Gainesville, Florida.
Walker served as a faculty member in the department of occupational therapy at the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions for 32 years, 16 of them as chair. Her research interests included topics related to neuro-development and sensory functions in children. She received the college’s Outstanding Alumni Award in 2005.
In a 2004 interview at the time of her retirement, Walker recalled that Alice Jantzen, Ph.D., founding chair of UF’s occupational therapy program, played a significant role in the direction of her career.
“She must have seen something in me that I didn’t,” Walker said of Jantzen. “She urged me to go to graduate school after receiving my bachelor’s degree from the UF program in 1964, and then she asked me to teach.”
Walker earned UF master’s and doctoral degrees in special education with a neuroscience emphasis. It wasn’t long before she decided that UF was the place to build her career. She found that teaching, developing curricula and clinical work was exciting, challenging and provided plenty of opportunities for learning. She learned a lot from her students, who, she said, were drawn to the field because they genuinely wanted to help humankind.
Still, the years she served were not without challenges.
As one of very few female department chairs at the university, Walker also took on the issue of equal recognition and compensation for female faculty members.
“It was difficult, not so much in our college, but across campus women were not shown the same regard they are now,” she said in 2004. “The phenomenon you hear about from those days — gender-based salary differences, women interrupted when speaking or called on last — I experienced that.”
As chair, Walker developed one of the first master’s programs in the country for people with a bachelor’s in non-occupational therapy fields, and one of the first occupational therapy distance learning master’s programs for working professionals. She saw her dream of a doctoral program realized with the development of the college’s rehabilitation science degree and was proud of her role in supporting the career development of young faculty.
Sherrilene Classen, Ph.D., M.P.H., OTR/L, FAOTA, current chair of the UF occupational therapy department reflected on Walker’s legacy.
“Dr. Kay Walker will always be remembered and celebrated as a ‘gentle giant’ of the UF OT Department,” she said. “Gentle, because she was humble, kind and open hearted; a giant because much of the progress of our current O.T.D. program rests on the educational cornerstones that she has laid down during her tenure at UF.”