Dr. Betsy Kemeny
340 Patterson Hall
724.738.4306
martha.kemeny@sru.edu
Dr. Betsy Kemeny, PhD, CTRS, FDRT is Professor and Director of the Recreational Therapy Program at SRU with 35 years as an educator and practitioner. For more than 20 years, she worked as a recreational therapist (CTRS) with older adults. After completing her BA at Wake Forest University with honors in Sociology and a MS in Therapeutic Recreation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she worked with older adults at all levels of care including adult day care, skilled nursing, hospice, assisted living and outpatient rehabilitation. In 2010, She completed a PhD in Administration and Leadership of Nonprofit and Public Sectors at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is recognized as a Fellow Distinguished in Recreational Therapy (FDRT), a Certified Professional Gerontologist (CPG), and a member of the Gerontological Society of America and the International Society on Autism Research (INSAR).
She specializes in community-engaged learning to provide students with hands-on experience, such as TRAILS (Therapeutic Recreation: Accessing Independence in Leisure and Social Skills), intergenerational programming with CONNECT and Phone Pals linking students and older adults living in the community, equine assisted services for veterans with mental health disorders. Dr. Kemeny served on the board of the American Therapeutic Recreation Association, the national professional association for recreational therapists, as Secretary from 2016 to 2019, and President (elect, president, past) from 2019 to 2022. From 2016 to 2020, she served as ATRA's liaison to CARTE, the Commission on Accreditation of Recreational Therapy Education. She is currently the Immediate Past-President for the National Academy of Recreational Therapists. Dr. Kemeny has an extensive research agenda focusing on older adults, adolescents with ASD, and animal assisted interventions. She is the author of Recreational Therapy for Older Adults. She particularly enjoys faculty-student research, grant writing, gardening, reading, and travel with her husband and visiting her two adult children and grandchild.
