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CENTURY COLLEGE: Expanding outreach to Ukrainian healthcare professionals
partnerships in the community. There are very few specialized prosthetic and orthotic programs across the country, so Century gets students from all over the country and even sometimes from other countries.
“Our partnerships are much more geographically spread,” Riedel said.
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Roger Wagner is a professor of orthotics and prosthetics and Century who specializes in clinical instruction and will be one of the main instructors during the training. Wagner teaches in the prosthetic clinical applications program, which means that he teaches students how to both design and fabricate, but also how to fit patients with artificial limbs.
Wagner is a Century College alum and completed his training in the mid ’90s. Eleven years ago, he received a phone call from the college offering him a teaching position, and he has not looked back since.
“I have the greatest job in the world because I worked in the field for nearly 17 years in private practice where I provided direct patient care,” Wagner said. “Now I get to teach that, as my primary role here at the college.”
Century’s partnership with the Protez Foundation began to move forward during a visit earlier in the spring arranged by the White Bear Lake Rotary that allowed health care professionals from Ukraine to visit the extremely active orthotics and prosthetics program at Century College. The Ukrainian professionals got a chance to look at the facilities and learn a little bit about the process at Century.
Wagner helped and volunteered at the Protez Foundation prior to the partnership and had conversations with Yavok Gradinar, Co-Founder, Certified Prosthetist and Orthotist, and Chief Medical Officer of the Protez Foundation.
Wagner and Gradinar continued to have conversations about a potential partnership, and according to Wagner, it just “grew and grew.”
“It started out as a conversation, and now has grown into a willingness to help others,” Wagner said.
Wagner is now in the process of writing and designing the
