Tessa Milman OTD, OTR/L

Assistant Professor of Clinical Occupational Therapy

Room: CHP 101A
(323) 442-2861
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Biography

Tessa Milman teaches courses in the USC Chan Division’s undergraduate, master’s and clinical doctorate programs. She was previously a postdoctoral research associate on the Autism in Urban Context study, a federally-funded ethnographic research study exploring the experiences of African American families with children with autism. As a postdoctoral research associate, Dr. Milman conducted interviews and observations with families and their service providers and participated in data analysis and manuscript preparation.

Before returning to USC as a faculty member, Dr. Milman was a practicing occupational therapist at the Violence Intervention Project, a private-public partnership program LAC+USC Medical Center to prevent, evaluate and treat victims of violence. Working there with children ages 3-18 who had experienced abuse and neglect, Dr. Milman helped them to self-regulate, connect with others, set career and school goals and engage in enjoyable and healing occupations. She also worked at The Santana House Youth Action Center (within VIP) to create and implement college awareness, college preparation and youth leadership programming at the Youth Center and at El Sereno Middle School.

Dr. Milman holds her Doctorate of Occupational Therapy and Master of Arts in Occupational Therapy, both from USC. She earned her BA degree in Sociology from Smith College.

Education

Doctorate of Occupational Therapy (OTD)
2009 | University of Southern California

Master of Arts (MA) in Occupational Therapy
2008 | University of Southern California

Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Sociology
2001 | Smith College

Publications

2018

Other Articles

Milman, T., & Pitts, D. B. (2018, March). Contemporary issues on supervision in community mental health practice [Continuing Education]. OT Practice, CEA0318, CE1–CE9. Full text Show abstract

This article will introduce and provide examples of two broad contemporary approaches that supervisors can use to strengthen mental health practice: reflective supervision and recovery-oriented supervision. Reflective supervision supports supervisees’ capacity for deep reflection and intentional action, and recovery-oriented supervision applies concepts from the recovery model to supervision, to empower supervisees to embrace the recovery model in practice.

ACOTE accreditation | NBCOT certification

The USC entry-level master's degree program is fully accredited by the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education® (ACOTE). ACOTE c/o Accreditation Department, American Occupational Therapy Association, Inc.®, 6116 Executive Boulevard, Suite 200, North Bethesda, MD 20852-4929, (301) 652-6611 x2914, acoteonline.org

Professional program graduates are eligible to apply for certification by National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy, Inc.® (NBCOT), nbcot.org. Program results from the NBCOT can be found online at https://secure.nbcot.org/data/schoolstats.aspx.