INA, Ill. – Starting next Fall, students interested in pursuing a career as an athletic trainer will be able to save thousands by taking their first two years at Rend Lake College. RLC and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale have teamed up to streamline the athletic training programs on each campus.

The Associate of Science Degree from RLC, specializing in athletic training and leading to a bachelor’s degree in athletic training, recently received the green light from the Illinois Community College Board and all RLC courses in this program have been articulated with the athletic training program at SIUC. That means students can take their first two years at RLC and transfer in as juniors into the program at SIUC.

In just four years, students who successfully complete the programs at RLC and SIUC will qualify to take the national examination to become certified athletic trainers. There is no two-year certification and the program is not all taping ankles and soothing sore muscles, as RLC Math and Sciences Division Chair Barb Davenport explains.

“I want students to understand that this is a rigorous program,” she said. “There are a lot of clinical hours involved in this program. They will have a lot of hands-on experience with athletic training.”

For a degree, RLC requires students successfully complete five clinical courses in athletic training, each with a different number of clinical hours to be completed under the supervision of a certified athletic trainer. Because of RLC’s vast athletics program – 16 teams in all and another on the way next Fall – students should be able to complete all or most of their RLC clinical right on site.

In addition to the clinical courses and general education requirements, students in athletic training at RLC will take classes like musculoskeletal anatomy, applications in athletic training, introduction to athletic training and therapeutic modalities.

Davenport said Dr. Toby Brooks, assistant professor and director of athletic training education at SIUC, came to her with the idea for students to get their first two years at RLC and transfer to SIUC for undergrad and graduate work.

“Because our athletics program has grown so tremendously, I felt this would be a great fit for Rend Lake College,” Davenport said.

Brooks said the ball started rolling months ago when he worked with Southern Illinois Orthopedic Center and RLC Director of Athletics Brent McLain to place an athletic trainer on the Rend Lake campus.

“In speaking with McLain, it sounded like athletics was definitely a growth area at the college with some pretty successful programs,” Brooks said. “That always provides more appeal for students. It sounded like it had some potential to be a successful academic program.”

In one way, students succeed right off the bat by enrolling in the now-articulated program at RLC. Brooks explained that, before courses were articulated, students could graduate from RLC and still have three or even four years to go at SIUC before they were qualified to sit for the national certification examination. Now, students and their families will save thousands by transferring from RLC to SIUC as a junior.

“It is definitely unique,” Brooks added. “To my knowledge, this is the first two-year college athletic training program to develop a pipeline into a four-year program.”

In order for that “pipeline” to work, there needs to be quality control, according to Brooks. SIUC wants to make sure RLC students become proficient in the same skills SIUC freshmen and sophomores are gaining.

“It was structured to be comparable to the first two years of SIUC’s program,” he said. “While Rend Lake students aren’t getting exactly the same sport exposure or athletic experience, an athletic injury is an athletic injury so we are comfortable that is a pretty comparable experience.”

After RLC, students move on to SIUC classes like upper and lower extremity evaluation, pharmacotherapy, research methods, general medical experiences, and rehabilitation, along with further core coursework toward SIUC’s requirements for a bachelor’s degree.

Once students have graduated and become certified, there is a lot of job potential in the local market, as well as across the nation, Brooks said. Certified athletic trainers typically find work in clinics, for professional sports teams, in orthopedic offices as physician extenders, and at the collegiate and high school levels as either trainers or teachers. They, like Dr. Brooks at one time, also work in non-traditional settings.

“I worked for a year at Continental Tire in Mt. Vernon,” he said. “A number of industrial employers have recognized the need for someone with the qualifications an athletic trainer possesses. Whey would a point guard on your basketball team be ready to come back from an ankle sprain after three days and a guy on your assembly line need two weeks?”

His graduates have gone on to work for NASCAR, Cirque De Sole, Disney, Justin Boots’ sports medicine team that travels the professional rodeo circuit, and the PGA.

“I’ve been the program director for four years and just about any student that graduates from our program, and wants a job around here, has been able to find one,” Brooks said. “The local job market is very good. I get calls all of the time from clinics and places looking for people with qualifications. Basically, anywhere there are physically active people, there is a need and a chance for employment as an athletic trainer.”