I am truly honored to be here today. I have grown up as a therapist and educator with so many friends and colleagues, and I am thankful for the gifts of remarkable teachers, mentors, and coworkers who have given me incredible experiences and opportunities to learn and take part in leadership on behalf of this wonderful profession.I want to acknowledge a deeply felt appreciation for the legacy of Polly Cerasoli. Polly was a long-time friend, from the time I moved to Boston in 1974, when she was at Northeastern University and I was at Boston University. She was a dedicated educator, administrator, and researcher, but I will remember her best for her laugh, her sense of humor, and her enthusiasm for everything. She is sincerely missed. And so it is all the more meaningful for me to be able to share my thoughts today to honor her memory.When I found out about this wonderful opportunity last year, I started jotting down some issues I thought we needed to address in physical therapy education. The list was long. Then 1 started reading all the previous lectures, as I am sure my predecessors did, to see what they talked about. What was dramatic and distressing was that just about every issue I had jotted down had already been addressed by one or more of them! My first reaction was, what the heck am I going to talk about that hasn't already been said? But then I became somewhat disheartened, thinking, if all of this has already been said over the past 16 years, by people who I consider inspirational leaders in physical therapy education, then why are so many of the issues still on my list? Have their challenges and appeals not been heard?I soon realized that there was one overriding theme that seemed to appear in every single prior lecture, that continued to be a clarion call today-and that theme is change. The word has been used by every speaker, and was the essential message of most. No matter where we are in our history, it seems, there is an overriding need to consider how we must keep up with health care, economics, technology, politics, educational theory, and society. But even with this message, we have not embraced a culture of change. With that realization, I found my focus-finding a path toward tomorrow where we would take action together to meet an uncertain future, without fear of how it might look different.The buzzword being used today in all discussions of change, especially in higher education, is innovation, perhaps an overused but clever substitute for change, maybe because it has a nobler connotation, because it implies change for the better, not for its own sake. The debate is focused on whether educators understand the nature of the changes we face, and if we are willing and ready to question and change academic traditions.For the past 3 years I have had the wonderful opportunity to see professional education from a different vantage point, as I took on the role of dean at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the MGH Institute of Health Professions. I oversee 4 programs-physical therapy, occupational therapy, communication sciences, and disorders and physician assistant-and I interact with our dean of nursing regularly. This role has enriched my perspective, as I have had to learn to view health care, academic culture, and clinical education through several lenses that are remarkably different and sometimes less than compatible, despite all being related to the same health care system. The benefit of this experience has been a fresh appreciation for the challenges of professional education and health care, viewed through the single lens of innovation.My purpose today is to reflect on how we, as a community, have dealt with change in physical therapy education or, perhaps more accurately, not dealt with it. My discussion will focus primarily on professional education, but many of the issues are equally relevant to physical therapist assistant programs. Change isn't something most people like; we prefer the comfort of tradition, being confident in our knowledge of the rules. …