Morria Heilman received the 2023 Robert Bartlett Student Recognition Award for Service and Leadership Excellence at a ceremony honoring the 2023 graduates.
Dr. Heilman was class treasurer and chair of service and philanthropy. She worked as a graduate assistant and as an interview day volunteer. She also served as the Allied Health Representative on the Duke University Judicial Board for one year and as a mentor for the Duke F1rsts Program, a network for first-generation graduate students.
For APTA North Carolina, she served on the Student Conclave Project Committee where they were required to quickly shift and develop the first-ever virtual Student Conclave due to the pandemic. In the next year, she was elected director of Student Involvement and as chair of the Student Conclave Project Committee which dramatically increased participation and sponsorships. In her final year, she was elected chair of the Student Special Interest Group where she oversaw all project committees, served as co-chair of the student conclave project committee, and as the student representative to the APTA NC Board.
Dr. Heilman volunteered for Root Causes, which aims to support the sustainable and humane production of food in combination with access to healthy foods. This involved taking orders and delivering orders in the community during the COVID pandemic. She worked as an athletic trainer at numerous youth and adult sporting events in the Raleigh-Durham area, including Durham Public Schools where she helped to develop a snack program to address food insecurities for athletes from low-income families.
She will be starting the Mass General Hospital & Northeastern University Sports PT Residency in Boston, Mass. this summer. The Robert Bartlett Student Recognition Award for Service and Leadership Excellence is given in honor the professor emeritus and former program director, who was a fellow and former president of the American Physical Therapy Association.