Illuminating a new perspective: A commemorative issue celebrating Prof Sylvia Rodger's work to improve lives.

Abstract

Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts. (Albert Einstein) I love this quote from Einstein—most especially because it places an important caveat on the tradition in the academe of evaluating contribution by a count. All too frequently academic careers are characterized by a series of counts:—number of grants held, number of peer- reviewed publications, number of doctoral students supervised, and so on. While numbers such as these do capture aspects of contribution, they fall far short from providing a fulsome picture of someone's true contributions. This state of affairs becomes particularly salient for me as I reflect on the contributions of an accomplished academic and outstanding occupational therapist, a cherished colleague and my dear friend, Sylvia Rodger. To be sure, by any form of academic count, Sylvia was a singularly stellar academic: she made tremendous contributions, to teaching, research and leadership; contributions that by sheer number make her second to none. But those numbers are not what come to mind when I think of Sylvia's contributions! Sylvia Rodger's true contributions can only be fully understood when one looks at what lies behind the accomplishments one sees listed on her CV. For example, simply to say she published a book on occupation therapy for children (Rodger, S. (Ed.) (2010). Occupation centred practice with children: A practical guide for occupational therapists) misses the essence of her contribution. In that book Sylvia, brought together a formidable group of international scholars to illuminate a new perspective for pediatric occupational therapy practice—one singularly focussed on evidence-based, occupational enablement! That book, like all Sylvia's work, is marked by two key features that are the hallmark of Sylvia's contributions—a dedication to excellence and a passion for improving lives through occupational engagement, especially the lives of children with occupational performance issues. I have the great fortune of having known Sylvia for decades and the pleasure of working with her directly on several projects. From our work together, it is clear that Slyvia did nothing without a view to excellence and a dedication to improving lives. She was never satisfied with the status quo; always driven to find a better way. From personal experience, I can attest that Sylvia worked tirelessly to give that agenda her all—whether that meant pouring over stacks of literature for hours at my dining room table to elucidate the state of the art of intervention for children with disabilities, subjecting herself to detailed scrutiny of videos of her applying the CO-OP approach so that she could be the most effective possible, conducting carefully designed studies to examine its use with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder or engaging in skype meetings in the early hours of the morning to create an anatomy of strategy use to support therapists in their work of occupational enablement. The excellence Sylvia brought to everything she did to improve lives ensures that all her work, be it a grant proposal, a research publication, a book chapter, a professional text book, or the supervision of students and the mentoring of colleagues, had the intended impact—improving lives. Her work serves to improve the lives of children, students, and colleagues, most importantly it serves to improve the work of occupational therapists! Through the excellence of her work, Sylvia has created a map for occupational therapists that enables evidence-based practice focussed on occupational enablement. Through her passion for improving occupational lives, Sylvia's research and writings have focussed on providing clinicians with the knowledge needed to promote occupation-based practice! Accordingly, her contributions illuminate a new perspective for the profession—one focussed on occupation-based practice—and drive the profession to new heights of evidence-based occupational enablement! This Issue of the Australian Occupational Therapy Journal celebrates the 2015 Australian Government honours award - Member of the Order, AM and the high regard of her professional colleagues.