Nancy A. Nuzzo, PT, Ph.D.

Biography

Dr. Nancy A. Nuzzo is the program director and dean of the Jean and Sal Campisi, Sr., Academic Center for Physical Therapy at Florida Southern College, a program she founded in 2017. In 2021, the School of Physical Therapy was granted accreditation and the inaugural DPT class graduated.

Dr. Nancy Nuzzo was originally doing research in physiology and biophysics before she started her journey into the realm of physical therapy and education.  Originally from Illinois, Dr. Nuzzo received her Ph.D. in the late 1980s from the University of Illinois at the Medical Center in Chicago. She was working on a research grant in the pharmacology department when she was asked to teach physical therapy at Northern Illinois University (NIU).  Dr. Nuzzo needed to go through their program and become a physical therapist before she could become a full-time faculty member. She was up for the challenge and ultimately spent 20 years at NIU.

Although she originally studied physiology and biophysics, Dr. Nuzzo fell in love with the acute care setting of physical therapy, where she utilizes all of her training as a physiologist.

After gaining experience at NIU, Dr. Nuzzo spent five years at the University of Jamestown assembling a physical therapy faculty and successfully obtaining accreditation for the program before she was recruited by FSC.  When she came to Florida Southern, she began assembling a team of faculty and staff who worked with her on the curriculum and putting other pieces in place to ensure the College’s physical therapy program would receive a stamp of approval from the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education (CAPTE).

CAPTE is an accreditation agency that is nationally recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Accreditation is necessary for students to become licensed, and the designation also opens up the number of clinical sites the College can utilize. The CAPTE accreditation process entails meeting all CAPTE standards, including continual self-evaluation, periodic external reviews, and regular reports to certify the educational quality of the physical therapy program.

The process of submitting a needs assessment for physical therapy in the area and an application for candidacy took about a year to complete. Once that was accepted by CAPTE, the school was considered a Candidate for Accreditation, allowing the school to bring in its first cohort of students, the Class of 2021, in the fall of 2019.  The program needed to submit a self-study and undergo an accreditation visit before the first class graduated. Dr. Nuzzo and her team submitted the self-study in April 2021, and the visit, which was virtual, took place in June 2021.  In December 2021, all the hard work came to fruition as CAPTE granted the School of Physical Therapy full accreditation.

Education

• Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics, University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center, Chicago, IL, 1986
• B.S. in Physical Therapy, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, 1991
• B.S. in Biology, Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, IL, 1978

Licensure

• Licensed Physical Therapist in Illinois
• Licensed Physical Therapist in Florida
• Licensed Physical Therapist in North Dakota