The Center for Outcomes Research and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, funded in 1994 and supported through 2003, developed outcomes studies and generated evidence upon which to base effective practice. Since 1994, CORE doctoral and post-doctoral fellows have generated over $11 million in funding. The concept of a scholarship of practice has generated two new international efforts in London and Stockholm to replicate CORE's idea of advancing and documenting the outcomes of practice. Notably, these efforts bring together scholars and practitioners in a common effort.CORE sponsored a series of events at the 2002 AOTA Annual Conference in Miami and a one-day institute at the AOTA Council on Education Program Directors' Meeting in November 2002. CORE and AOTF sponsored a scientific panel on Participatory Action Research at the AOTA Annual Conference in June 2003.

From 1999 to 2007, the AOTF Institute sponsored three interdisciplinary conferences to enable scholarly exploration of the construct of human habit and its role in everyday life. 

The third of these conference, "Habits III," convened in January 2007 and involved eighty-nine scholars representing twelve fields and disciplines. The proceedings of this conference, entitled Habit and Rehabilitation: Promoting Participation, are available through the publisher SLACK, Inc. as the supplement to the fall 2007 issue of OTJR: Occupation, Participation, and Health. 

Task Force on Occupation in Societal Crises, created in 2002 in response to the attack on 9/11, linked occupational therapy perspectives to societal networks that help people manage stress and create a healthy balance through meaningful occupation.

The AOTA/AOTF Leadership Mentoring Program, 2007-2010, addressed the critical need to systematically enhance the emergence of new leaders within the academic community. Participation was open to occupational therapy program directors at both the OT and OTA levels.

The program was based upon Mentoring Circles®, an innovative group-mentoring method developed by the Mentoring Company. This process introduced participants to contemporary leadership theory and practice, and engages them in a standardized leadership assessment process. Participants used The Leadership Practice Inventory (LPI) as a reliable tool for identifying personal leadership practices from five general categories: Challenging the Process, Inspiring a Shared Vision, Enabling Others to Act, Modeling the Way, and Encouraging the Heart.

The AOTA/AOTF Leadership Mentoring Program offered individuals the opportunity to participate in a series of sixteen mentoring sessions led by a Catalyst Mentor. The group mentoring process is grounded in the needs of the participants who will identify the specific mentoring topics. The Catalyst mentor used real-time stories from her personal experience to efficiently transfer best practices that promote leadership. From time-to-time, Guest Mentors joined the mentoring circle to address specific topics identified by the group.

The Leadership Mentoring Program assisted OT programs in faculty development by helping faculty achieve their goals in moving out of entry-level to the post-baccalaureate degree as required by the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education (ACOTE), the educational certifying body of the profession of occupational therapy.

AOTF's investment in the Leadership Mentoring Program built on its long history of faculty development. Previous projects include:

• Curriculum Mentoring Project- The first of these programs concluded at the end of 2002. This program, called the "Curriculum Mentor's Project," was designed as a year-long pilot study to determine what effect a mentor could have on the development of increased scholarship across faculty and student participants in a master's entry level program in occupational therapy. Five schools were selected from the applicant pool and worked with their mentors for a 12-month period.
• Regional Workshop Series - The second program, the "Regional Workshop Series on Curriculum Revision," ran from 2001-2003. In this program, designed collaboratively by AOTA, ACOTE, and AOTF, twenty-two schools grouped by geographic locales shared a series of three workshops, each school usually hosting one workshop. Both academic and fieldwork faculty join in the exploration of topics designed to move the program into the graduate education mode, to ensure that the concept of occupation is grounding the curriculum, and that new and innovative fieldwork methods and sites are represented in each program.