Areas of Interest

• Improving the ways by which schools identify and provide intervention to students with reading difficulties.
• Responsiveness-to-intervention (RTI) in the identification of learning disabilities.
• Reading instruction for students with severe cognitive impairments, including students with Down syndrome.
• Application of cognitive neuroscience techniques to the study of reading.

Keyword Interest

• Early Reading Interventions
  • Responsiveness to Intervention
  • Identification of Students with Learning Disabilities
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • ERP
  • Down Syndrome

  Current Research Topic/Field-Based Project

  Project:
  Providing a phonics-based reading intervention and modeling individual growth for students with Down syndrome.

  Project:
  Exploring the utility of event-related potential (ERP) data to enhance the identification of students who are in need of additional academic support in the area of reading.

  Project:
  Exploring the effects of scaling up Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) in elementary grades.

  Former Experience

  • Research Associate, Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts, University of Texas, Austin.
  • Project Coordinator, Texas Reading First Higher Education Collaborative.
  • School Coordinator, Scaling UP Effective Reading Interventions.
  • Special Education Teacher.

  Education

  • M.A. (2000): Special Education, University of Texas, Austin
  • B.S. (1999): Applied Learning and Development, University of Texas, Austin
  • B.A. (1996): Psychology, University of Texas, Austin