The A. J. Pappanikou Center (CT UCEDD) to Start Two New Projects
December 11, 2012
The CT UCEDD will establish an Early Childhood Personnel Center that will serve as a national resource on personnel standards, competencies, and recommended practices for professional development of personnel providing services to infants, toddlers, and preschool children with disabilities and their families. The project will be spearheaded by Mary Beth Bruder, PhD, Director of the CT-UCEDD and George Sugai, PhD, Director, Center for Behavioral Education & Research at UConn in the Neag School of Education will serve as the Co-Director. Three regional Directors include Eva Horn, PhD, from the UCEDD at Kansas University, Jane Squires, PhD, from the UCEDD at the University of Oregon, and Juliann Woods, PhD, at Florida State University. An executive leadership team will work in tandem with the Directors and includes Carl Dunst, PhD of the Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute, Sharon Lynn Kagan, EdD of Columbia University and the Yale Child Study Center and Larry Edelman, MS, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
A total of 10 national early childhood and education organizations will partner with the Center. Most notably, the Division for Early Childhood, Council for Exceptional Children, will be integral to the project’s plan of operation and projected outcomes. Together these partners will work with states to align their personnel standards with national professional organization standards, will ensure there is alignment between preservice and inservice training for personnel, and will develop integrated early childhood professional development systems, all with the purpose of ensuring that infants, toddlers and preschool children with disabilities and their families are supported by effective teachers and other personnel to achieve measurable and meaningful outcomes.
For the second project, the Center will develop, implement, and evaluate a new doctoral training program in early childhood intervention(ECI) at the University of Connecticut (UConn) Neag School of Education. The program will fund 8 students who will complete the program in 3 years. It will build on the expertise of a core group of faculty at UConn and represents a formal collaboration across two schools located on two UConn campuses: The Neag School of Education at the Storrs Campus and the School of Medicine on the Farmington Campus.
The doctoral training program will be affiliated with two University Research Centers, each directed by one of the Principal Investigators of the grant: The Center for Behavioral Education and Research (CBER, which conducts research and provides technical assistance related to academic and behavior supports) directed by George Sugai, PhD and the A.J. Pappanikou Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities Education, Research, and Service (UCEDD, which is interdisciplinary and has a focus on neurodevelopmental and other high need disabilities such as Autism Spectrum Disorder) directed by Mary Beth Bruder, PhD. In addition, Brian Reichow, PhD, BCBA-D, Research Director for the Center will serve as research faculty on the program. The content of the doctoral program will reflect national personnel preparation standards with a focus on high need children (because of poverty).
The leadership competencies will prepare the doctoral students for faculty positions in higher education programs where they will teach early childhood intervention to students preparing for careers in early childhood intervention. The program will provide learning opportunities that include coursework, seminars, supervised internships and individual mentoring across the core responsibilities of higher education faculty: education, research, scholarship (e.g., teaching and supervision; writing for journals and books, presenting original work and research at state, regional, and national conferences; grant writing) and community engagement and outreach to improve intervention practice and policy. Community engagement and outreach for practice and policy will be implemented through established partnerships in programs and agencies serving high need infants, families and families in high poverty urban schools districts in CT. Other internships will occur with state agencies and national organizations which also have partnered with the applicants of this proposal in the past.
