UTC alum Faith Rose becomes first graduate of UTC-Siskin Hospital geriatric physical therapy residency

When Dr. Faith Rose received her framed certificate as the first graduate of the Siskin Hospital-University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Geriatric Physical Therapy Residency Program, the applause was for more than one graduate.

The graduation ceremony, held Thursday, July 30, at Siskin Hospital for Physical Rehabilitation, marked a personal milestone for Rose, a first for Siskin Hospital and another step toward preparing more specialists to serve older adults in Chattanooga and across Tennessee.

Rose, who earned her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from UTC in 2020, completed the 12-month post-professional residency after a year of advanced clinical training, research, teaching and mentorship focused on geriatric care. The program, launched in 2025 through a partnership between UTC and Siskin Hospital, was built to meet a need that leaders in both organizations say is only becoming more urgent as the population ages.

“Older adults are really where the heart and focus of our program is,” said Dr. Matt Annessi, Siskin Hospital’s director of residency programs. “Older adults are one of the fastest growing demographics in our state.”

Speakers pointed to the changing needs of the region, the value of specialized training and the importance of giving physical therapists a deeper foundation for working with patients whose care is often more complex than a standard treatment plan allows.

Annessi said the residency is designed to help clinicians move beyond treating a diagnosis in isolation. Geriatric specialists, he said, consider the whole patient: mobility, cognition, medical history and the goals that matter most to that individual. The aim is to deliver care in a specialized, evidence-based way that helps older adults maintain strength, function and independence.

The program is currently a candidate for accreditation with the American Board of Physical Therapy Residency and Fellowship Education, and Annessi said leaders were encouraged by the program’s visit with the accrediting body in April.

For UTC and Siskin Hospital, the graduation also represented the result of months of behind-the-scenes work to build the residency from the ground up.

Dr. Stephanie Eton, associate professor of practice and director of residency education in the UTC Department of Physical Therapy, said creating the program required paperwork, planning and long conversations, and—but just as important—trust between two institutions learning how to build something new together.

“We built real working relationships between two institutions that had to learn what a residency should look like in practice,” Eton said. “Getting to build those relationships alongside the people at Siskin Hospital and UTC has genuinely been one of the most rewarding parts of my work.”

Over the past year, Eton said Rose completed a clinical schedule centered on older patients while rotating through settings that expanded her experience and sharpened her judgment. Her residency included outpatient, orthopedic, neurologic and lymphedema, and wound care rotations. She also completed a major research project, contributed to quality improvement work related to frailty screening, gave a community presentation for older adults and worked with UTC DPT students in the lab.

The year did more than add credentials, Eton said. It immersed Rose in the demands and possibilities of geriatric care.

“Faith agreed to be our first resident before any of us could promise her exactly what the year would even look like. And that took trust,” Eton said. “She came in a strong, capable clinician already, but she is leaving a clinician who thinks critically about complex geriatric presentations, who our staff already turned to for insight on difficult cases, and who carries herself with the same humility and steadiness on her hardest days as her easiest ones.”

Eton highlighted Rose’s capstone project on power training for patients with osteopenia, describing it as an example of the mindset the program is trying to develop.

Instead of defaulting to a conservative plan simply because a patient is older, Eton said, Rose followed the evidence and built an approach that safely pushed the patient toward greater strength.

“Investing in geriatric care is investing in the future,” Eton said. “Faith spent a year making sure that when that future arrives, there will be clinicians ready for it who know how to see an older patient, not as someone to manage passively, but as someone still worth pushing toward strength.”

Matthew A. Gibson, Ph.D., FACHE, President and CEO of Siskin Hospital for Physical Rehabilitation, said the residency is a natural extension of Siskin Hospital’s mission and of its long partnership with UTC. He noted that the geriatric residency is one of only five such programs in the Southeast, and the collaboration gives Rose and future residents access to a wide range of learning environments.

“This is the first geriatric residency graduate,” Gibson said, “and this partnership with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is something that we’re also very honored and excited about.”

There were lighter moments, too. In one of the ceremony’s biggest applause lines, Annessi looked at the inaugural graduate and the inaugural class record and delivered a statistic that drew laughs from the audience.

“As of today, our program has a 100% graduation rate,” he said.

But beneath the laughter was a serious point. Residency education is intensive, and it asks already licensed clinicians to spend another year pushing deeper into a specialty area while balancing patient care, scholarship and close mentorship.

For Rose, that extra year was about gaining a broader way of seeing patients and a stronger foundation for what comes next.

“I feel so relieved and happy and excited,” Rose said after the ceremony. “I feel like I’ve learned so much, and I can’t wait to use it all and continue my career and help people.”

Rose said one of the most meaningful parts of the year was the mentorship she received from clinicians across the residency.

“I am so happy that I got all the mentorship that I got from all of these wonderful clinicians,” she said.

What’s next for Rose?

“I’m going to start studying for board certification as a geriatric clinical specialist, so I’ll have some more alphabet soup behind my name,” she said. “For me, the most important thing is that I have such a broader perspective on my patients and what they need, and I’m hoping that maybe I can use that in a way to help the community at large.”

Learn more

Visit UTC

UTC Physical Therapy and Doctor of Physical Therapy

Siskin/UTC Geriatric PT Residency Program

UTC, Siskin Hospital expand partnership with new geriatric PT residency