In the News: OTD Student Sarah Shoun

Jan. 29, 2025 ― DENTON ― Texas Woman’s doctoral student Sarah Shoun was featured in a Baton Rouge WAFB9 television news segment about her occupational therapy capstone project that centered on social connections and adaptive ping pong for people with Parkinson’s disease. The third-year OTD student returned to her hometown of Baton Rouge, La., to work on her community project during the spring semester. 

She collaborated with a local Parkinson’s group that was already in the process of putting together a Friday social hour at a YMCA. 

“Ping-pong allows participants to stand or sit, and we also created stations where they rotate through and have designated sit-and-rest-water breaks to limit fatigue throughout the class,” Shoun said. 

Shoun has had good responses from participants about the stations and mixing in regular ping-pong with drill stations, verbal ping-pong, and conversation card stations where they can socialize with one another.