Brent Elder, a UC Santa Barbara Gevirtz School alumnus, has been offered a Fulbright grant to Kenya in Education by the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Currently, Elder is earning his Ph.D. in Special Education and Disability Studies at Syracuse University.
Elder attended UC Santa Barbara as an undergraduate, earning degrees in psychology and art history in 2002. He then graduated from the Teacher Education Program at the Gevirtz School in 2004 with an emphasis in special education (a Preliminary Level I Education Specialist: Moderate/Severe Credential), and then received the Level II Education Specialist Credential: Moderate/Severe Disabilities from CSU Northridge. Elder previously worked as a special education teacher at the Kellogg School in Goleta, CA, and also taught courses at the Gevirtz School for three years, and later worked at CalTASH. Elder has collaborated with institutions in Bahrain and Kenya as an education consultant.
In Kenya, Elder will be presenting at the 3rd Annual International Conference on Education at Kenyatta University in Nairobi. According to Elder, “Our presentation is on ‘no cost’ strategies teachers in primary, secondary, and higher education can use to create sustainable inclusive education systems, as outlined by Article 24 in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). After the conference we will train teachers at a primary school in Western Kenya how to implement these strategies to desegregate schools in the region.”