Bluhm, a graduate of Rocky Mountain College’s Occupational Therapy Doctorate program, did not find her way to OT through a traditional pre-health pathway. After years of working jobs that left her “barely surviving financially,” she describes her introduction to the field as an answer to prayer. Her sister, a social worker, suggested she look into occupational therapy after watching how the kids on her caseload responded to it.
“She thought it would be really up my alley,” Bluhm said. “The more I looked into it, the more I thought, yeah, that fits me really well.”
Bluhm found Rocky Mountain College’s OTD program after exploring other master’s-level programs. She almost passed on it, hesitant to enroll in a newly launched program and intimidated by the idea of a doctorate. A conversation with a program faculty member, who reached out directly to answer her questions about the application, changed her mind.
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Once enrolled, Bluhm navigated the program while managing ADHD and dyslexia. She now speaks publicly about her learning differences, research, and lived experience with generational poverty. The adjustment was not always smooth. Advocating for accommodations took persistence, and the shift into a laptop-driven graduate classroom culture was a startling contrast from the paper-and-pencil coursework she had done at Portland Community College.
The accommodations at Rocky Mountain College and the process of embracing her strengths with faculty support became the foundation of her success. The clinical documentation she wrote during her fieldwork placement, once a point of concern in the classroom, became one of the first things her supervisors complimented. She passed her board exam on her first attempt.
“I had to go through this process of learning that I was just using what I thought I needed to get by, but not using what I would need to thrive,” Bluhm said. “That was a huge difference.”
Rocky Mountain College’s Academic Success team played a direct role in that shift, working with Bluhm to build personalized tools for managing her coursework, including a visual tracking system she designed herself so that deadlines did not become overwhelming.
Bluhm’s clinical training took place across two fieldwork placements in Missoula: an inpatient psychiatric unit serving adult and adolescent patients, and a pediatric mental health clinic. She calls the inpatient placement one of the hardest things she has done, not because of the clinical material, but because of what it demanded of her personally and professionally as she built confidence in real time.
After graduating, Bluhm launched her own mental health OT practice in Billings, later partnering with CrossWay Counseling Center, where she now runs GROWTH, a program she built to help clients strengthen executive functioning, process trauma, and develop self-understanding. Her work draws directly on the two areas she said drew her to Rocky Mountain College in the first place: a strong research foundation and a specific focus on mental health, a specialty area of occupational therapy that remains widely misunderstood outside the profession.
“A lot of people don’t realize that OTs work in mental health,” Bluhm said, reflecting on the early days of building her practice and educating referral sources and clients about what that work looks like.
Her advice to current and future graduate students is direct: protect one full day off each week, even when the workload makes that feel irresponsible.
“There were many times where it seemed like a silly thing to do because there’s so much to get done,” Bluhm said. “But it is what helped that longevity and kept burnout at bay.”
Bluhm’s path, from two humanities degrees to a doctorate in occupational therapy to a mental health practice built around her own story, reflects what Rocky Mountain College’s Occupational Therapy Doctorate program aims to produce: clinicians who bring their full selves, including their challenges, into work that changes how people understand their own potential.
Rocky Mountain College’s Occupational Therapy Doctorate program prepares students for careers as licensed occupational therapists through a curriculum grounded in hands-on fieldwork, small cohort mentorship, and a strong emphasis on research and mental health specialization. The program is based in Billings, Montana.
