About / Jan 10 / Fourth Annual UC SPEDDR Conference

January 12, 2010
For immediate release

UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz Graduate School to host the fourth annual UC Conference for Research in Special Education, Disabilities, and Developmental Risk

UC Santa Barbara’s the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education hosts the fourth annual UC Conference for Research in Special Education, Disabilities, and Developmental Risk (SPEDDR) on January 21-22, 2010 at the Santa Barbara Inn. This event is open to the press and students throughout the UC system. Due to space limitations, this event is not open to the general public. This year the conference will feature presentations, roundtable symposia, and posters from graduate and post-doctoral students from University of California campuses on topics on students at-risk; prevention, intervention, and strategic instruction.

Key note speakers will present recent findings. Presenting on Thursday, January 21st is Mian Wang, associate professor in the Special Education, Disabilities, and Risk Studies emphasis in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at UCSB. Wang received the Early Career Award from the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAID). His work is internationally known; in addition to research efforts to increase child, family, and professional partnerships of those with disabilities, through his work at the Beach Center on Disability at the University of Kansas, and locally in the Tri-Counties area and for the Pacific Rim Consortium, he also is a member of international collaborative efforts to increase the visibility and quality of life for children and families with disabilities.

Keynote speak on Friday, January 22nd is Rollanda O’Connor, associate professor at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Riverside. Her current work focuses on phonological awareness skills in reading acquisition, response to intervention (RtI), and the role of fluency in reading comprehension. Throughout her research she has worked on areas of early identification of reading disability, professional development for teachers in research-based practices, and other areas of support and instruction for students in all stages of the reading process. Dr. O’Connor is also the past president of the Division for Learning Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children, and is the principal investigator for several multi-year grants funded by the Institute of Educational Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education.

A panel of recent UC doctoral graduate students will address experiences and offer advice to doctoral students preparing to graduate as they transition into post-doctoral and academic careers. Presenting Thursday, January 21st are Erica Howell, an assistant professor at California State University, Fullerton and Russell Lang, post-doctoral scholar at UCSB. On Friday, January 22nd, Lindsay Flynn and Xinhua Zheng will discuss post-doctoral work at the University of California, Riverside.

“The Doctoral Advisory Council believes that UC SPEDDR is an exciting and innovative collaborative opportunity to bring doctoral students across the UC system together in order to share and expand upon one another’s work,” states Council Chair Stacy Lauderdale. “We are pleased to announce the upcoming conference for doctoral and post-doctoral students interested in SPEDDR related topics. We hope that SPEDDR continues to thrive as an ongoing means for doctoral students to express and expand on their knowledge about learning and instruction.”

This annual conference is organized by the faculty and doctoral student committees of the proposed University of California Center for Research in Special Education, Disabilities and Developmental Risk (UC SPEDDR). Faculty and student representatives from these committees are drawn from campuses across the University of California system including UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Riverside. The Center is being developed as a Multi-Campus research unit that aims to unify and solidify UC resources. The primary aims of the Center are to enhance the University of California’s ability to attract from a national pool of talented students, win large extramural grants, improve national visibility of UC efforts, and enhance the doctoral preparation of the next generation of research, teacher education, and other related public service doctorates.

[UC SPEDDR doctoral student advisory council chair Stacy Lauderdale is available for interview; contact George Yatchisin at 805 893 5789]
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UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz Graduate School to host the fourth annual UC Conference for Research in Special Education, Disabilities, and Developmental Risk