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LSI Lifeline Online November 2002 Issue 61
News for the investigators, staff and associates of the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies
Karen Henry, editor kahenry@ku.edu
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LSI Lifeline Online November 2002 Issue 61
Karen Henry, editor kahenry@ku.edu
The Life Span Institute at the University of Kansas
1052 Dole Human Development Center
1000 Sunnyside Avenue
Lawrence, KS 66045-7555 (785) 864-4295 TDD (785) 864-5051
LSI web site: http://www.lsi.ku.edu
Reminder: Need investigator comments on
new GRA Tuition Program
Steve Warren would like to provide feedback to the Provost regarding any concerns
that investigators have about the new tuition program for GRAs. All investigators
should have received a copy of the new program description a few days ago and
it is online at: http://www.ku.edu/~provost/GRA_tuition_assistance2.htm.
Please send comments, concerns, or questions to Steve Warren at sfwarren@ku.edu
by Monday, November 25th.
Contents
Features
Life Span convenes Disaster/Emergency Preparedness Task Force
Merrill Advanced Studies Center plans ambitious 2003 publishing/conference schedule
Institute for Child Development launches newsletter for families and service providers
Publications
Online Publications
Correction: The last issue incorrectly stated that only the Mental Retardation
and Developmental Disabilities Center sponsored the upcoming Language to Literacy
lecture series. The series is sponsored by the MRDDRC as well as by other KU
developmental disabilities researchers who represent a spectrum of the behavioral
and biological sciences affiliated with the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life
Span Studies, the Institute for Child Development, the Center for Reproductive
Sciences, the Beach Center on Disability, the Juniper Gardens Children's Project,
and the Kansas University Center on Developmental Disabilities.
Administration News & Announcements
Project Development November update
Research Design & Analysis Dec. 6 Brownbag on Modeling Intra-individual Change in Personality Traits
Information Technology Services EndNote6 workshops
After working on a Saturday, the last thing Dot
Nary needed was to find the elevators were out of order on the 4th floor of
the Dole Center for Human Development at KU when she started for home.
Nary, RTC/IL training director and Life Span Institute research assistant uses
a wheelchair. But unlike most other people who use wheelchairs, she can go down
stairs on her backend, if necessary.
She chose to inch down the two flights of stairs, although KU public safety
officers had arrived and offered to carry her.
According to Nary, people with mobility impairments risk injury from being carried
by untrained rescuers.
“We never know how well the rescuers have been trained, whether they have
bad backs, etc.,” she said. “I appreciate good intentions, but I don’t
necessarily want to trust my physical well-being to an unknown person.”
“And I doubt if they could have carried me if I weighed 250 pounds and
used a 200-pound power chair,” she added. “We can’t depend on
untrained co-workers or emergency personnel to carry us to safety.”
Nary is one the seven Life Span Institute (LSI) staff members who use wheelchairs
or have other mobility impairments whose offices are in Dole and Haworth. The
Institute also has one staff member who is blind and two with developmental
disabilities.
“As a disabilities research institute, it became obvious after 9/11 that
we needed to use our expertise to develop an exemplary emergency response plan,”
said Steven Warren, LSI director.
Warren recently convened a task force that includes Nary and Vicki Turbiville,
LSI project coordinator, who uses crutches, to ensure that staff who have first-hand
experience with mobility impairments help shape the plan.
Moreover, both Nary and Turbiville are disabilities policy specialists and researchers.
The goal of the task force is limited to planning for fire and weather emergency
evacuations of LSI staff with physical, sensory and developmental disabilities
in Dole and Haworth but could eventually be submitted to KU safety and emergency
officials for consideration as a campus-wide model.
“We will be studying all types of emergency evacuation procedures and equipment
that might apply—from those used by nursing homes to those developed by
cave and mountain rescue teams,” Nary said.
“After 9/11 the disability and emergency response communities realized
advising people to simply wait in stairwells or safe rooms for rescuers to carry
them to safety was too little, too late.”
Joy Simpson, Program Administrator
The Merrill Center board of directors met this
month and approved a slate of exciting conferences and projects for 2003.
Hugh Catts is directing a national conference on language and reading
disorders that will involve leading experts such as Reid Lyon from
the NICHD and Margaret Snowling from the University of York.
Mabel Rice and Steve Warren are directing their second conference
on developmental language disorders with NIH, and in the next few months
expect to publish the collection from their May 2002 conference that included
Don Bailey, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at the Univ.
of North Carolina - Chapel Hill; Catherine Lord, University of Michigan
Autism and Communication Disorders Center; Carolyn Mervis, University
of Louisville; Shelley Smith, Monroe Meyer Institute at the University
of Nebraska Medical Center; Len Abbeduto, Waisman Center at the University
of Wisconsin at Madison, and others. Their goal is to establish a unified
framework on language that will prove useful for several clinical populations,
including children with Downs syndrome, Williams syndrome, fragile X, Specific
Language Impairment and autism. The book title is: Developmental Language
Disorders: From Phenotypes to Etiologies.
The Merrill Center will also hold its 7th annual regional retreat on the theme
of Recruitment and Training of Future Scientists: How Policy Shapes the Mission
of Graduate Education. Keynote speakers will be Debra Stewart, President
of the Council of Graduate Schools, and Martha Crago, Dean of Graduate
Studies at McGill University in Canada.
Dave Richman, psychologist and assistant
professor, and Ann Clemens, project manager and graphic designer both
at Developmental Disabilities Center (DDC) at KUMC, along with the able assistance
of the DDC Research Committee, have launched Speak Up for Kids. The two-page
newsletter designed for parents, other family members and service providers
of children seen at the DDC Clinics is a simple, attractive publication written
in language accessible to a broad audience.
The first issue will be distributed to family members with children who are
patients in the DDC Clinics within the next two weeks and features tips for
parents (including web sites for further information), descriptions of two
projects of interest to families, and contact information to participate in
on-going projects.
If you know of families or practitioners who should be receiving Speak Up
for Kids, send their names and addresses to Sharon Barnett, DDC program assistant,
at sbarnett@kumc.edu.
Michael Wehmeyer named 2002 AAMR Education
Award recipient
Michael Wehmeyer, director of Kansas University Center on Developmental
Disabilities, associate director of the Beach Center on Disability and associate
professor of Special Education at KU has been named the 2002 AAMR Education
Award recipient.
Rud Turnbull, Beach Center co-director, described the significance
of Michael’s work that was recognized by this prestigious award as follows:
Michael has pioneered research into “self-determination” --- basically,
living the life that you want to live. Although most people without disabilities
take it for granted that they can "determine" some parts of their lives, students
and adults with disabilities, especially those who have mental retardation,
have been unable to make the assumption. For most of them, life was one of
learning to depend on others, of ceding control over their own lives to others.
Together with the leading thinkers in the field of cognitive disability, Michael
resisted this profound loss of autonomy and citizenship from an ideological
perspective; more than that, he conducted research that demonstrates that
independence, not dependence, can be taught, learned, and practiced.
His research has had profound effects on public policy, school curricula,
and student and adult outcomes. Indeed, his research has proved to be the
most significant research in America, if not the world, on how teachers, family
members, and, of course, students with disabilities, especially those with
mental retardation, can gain control over their lives, achieve full citizenship,
and fully participate in American life.
As much as any one in the field of mental retardation, Michael combines progressive
ideology with superb scholarship. The fact that he has received the AAMR Education
Award and been elected to be a Fellow of the AAMR underscores his pivotal
role as a researcher, educator, and leader.
Wehmeyer wins TASH Thomas G. Haring Award
Michael Wehmeyer, along with co-authors, Guy Gilberts, Martin Agran,
Carolyn Hughes, were named the 2002 Thomas G. Haring Award for their article,
The effects of peer-delivered self-monitoring strategies on the participation
of students with severe disabilities in general education classrooms, published
in Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, volume
26, 25–36.
The Thomas G. Haring Award is a $1,000 award established by Norris Haring,
one of the founders of TASH, and his wife, Dorothy in memory of their son,
Thomas. The purposes of The Thomas G. Haring Award are to promote research
and scholarly activity in the field of severe disabilities, and to recognize
excellence among researchers within the field. The LSI’s Wayne Sailor,
professor of Special Education, was also one of the founders of TASH.
Life Span Institute at Parsons alumni honored by ASHA
Life Span alumni Lyle Lloyd, James McLean and Gerald Siegel
will be honored by their ASHA peers at the 2002 convention this week. Lloyd,
now professor of special education and professor of audiology and speech sciences
at Purdue, developed an improved behavioral procedure for the audiometric
testing of persons with severe intellectual impairments, while at Parsons,
with retired Life Span scientist and HDFL Adjunct Professor Joe Spradlin.
James McLean, KU professor emeritus, and adjunct professor at the University
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, was noted for his vision in the development
of communication training for children with severe disabilities.
Gerald Siegel, professor of emeritus, University of Minnesota, was
distinguished for his role in establishing the field of speech-language pathology
as a scientific discipline and respected profession.
The RTC/IL Disaster Preparation and Emergency
Grant reported in the last issue of Lifeline Online generated local
media attention. RTC/IL Director Glen White and Training Director Dot Nary
were interviewed by the Lawrence Journal-World (see http://www.ljworld.com/section/frontpage/story/113147,
Channel 6 News (see http://www.ljworld.com/section/archive/story/113129)
and KCUR-FM in Kansas City.
A special section of the November 18 New York Times on charitable giving
featured the accomplishments of KU’s own Liliana Mayo, director, and
Judy LeBlanc, program and development director of the Ann Sullivan Center.
Moreover, the fundraising and support of Stephen and Carolyn Schroeder and
the contributions of KU faculty were credited. See http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/giving/18ONEI.html.
The 36th Edition of the Kansas Statistical Abstract will soon be online. This year's abstract will be available online as a PDF file with individual pages available in Microsoft Excel and PDF. For more information, see http://www.ku.edu/pri/ksdata/ksah/.
The Merrill Center is publishing online a four-part
series, The Building Blocks of Language in Early Childhood, written
by Joy Simpson, Merrill Center program administrator, based on interviews
with Director Steven Warren and Nancy Brady, Life Span Institute Associate
Research Professor. Part 1, What we know about communication between infants
and parents, is available at http://merrill.ku.edu/IntheKnow/sciencearticles/PMTintervention.html.
Parts 2-4 will be released monthly and address the early detection of disabilities
and the value of an interactive environment in developing communication skills
in children with developmental disabilities.
Paul Diedrich, Associate Director for Project Development
Past Submissions not previously reported
1. Mabel Rice, in collaboration with Shelley
Smith at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, submitted a five-year
competing continuation, “Morphosyntactic Abilities of SLI Probands and
Families” to NIDCD on November 1, 2002.
2. Michael Wehmeyer, Susan Palmer and Jennifer Lattimore submitted a new three-year
proposal “A Research Project on Quality of Life and Self-Determination”
in response to DE/OSERS/NIDRR’s Field Initiated Research competition
on November 13, 2002.
Upcoming Submissions
1. Joe Donnelly, Dennis Jacobsen and Matthew
Adeyanju will submit their third-year progress report for “Prevention
of Obesity by Alteration of Dietary Fat” to NIDDK on December 1, 2002.
2. Jim Sherman, Richard Saunders, Nancy Brady, Irene Grote, Betty Hart, Kathryn
Saunders and Muriel Saunders will submit their nineteenth-year progress report
for the program project “Communication of People with Mental Retardation”
to NICHD on December 1, 2002.
New Awards (not previously funded) Information
1. Mabel Rice received a new, five-year center
award for “Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communication Disorders”
from NIDCD that began September 23, 2002.
2. Sara Sack received a new, three-year award for “Kansas Community Personal
Attendant Services and Supports” from DHHS/Center for Medicare and Medicaid
Services that began September 30, 2002.
3. Diane Loeb received a new, three year award for “Project CIRCLE 2:
Creating Indian Resources to Facilitate Communication skills in Learning Environments”
from DE/OIE that began October 1, 2002.
4. Kathleen Olson received a new, two-year award for “Kansas Mobilizing
for Change: Comprehensive Workforce Development Initiative” from the
Kansas Council on Developmental Disabilities (prime contractor is the University
of Minnesota) that began October 1, 2002.
Todd Little, Director, Research Design & Analysis
Dec. 6 Brownbag: Modeling Intra-individual
Change in Personality Traits
The Research Design & Analysis Unit and the Psychology Department is holding
a Brown Bag on December 6 from 1- 2:30 pm. in 547 Fraser Hall. Fordham University’s
Daniel K. Mroczek, Ph.D. will be presenting Modeling Intra-individual Change
in Personality Traits.
Description: To advance an intra-individual lifespan approach to the issue
of stability and change, we studied personality trait trajectories in adulthood.
Growth curves for extraversion and neuroticism were estimated for over 1,600
men (initially aged 43 to 91) in the Normative Aging Study, who were followed
over 12 years. We found significant individual differences in intra-individual
change for both traits, as well as different trajectories for extraversion
and neuroticism. The overall extraversion trajectory was best defined by a
linear model, but neuroticism was characterized by quadratic decline with
age. We then considered several variables as predictors of individual differences
around these overall trajectories. Birth cohort, marriage or remarriage, death
of spouse, and memory complaints were all significant predictors, explaining
variability in both level and rate of personality trait change. These findings
suggest that there is a good deal of variability in personality trajectories,
and that some of this variability can be explained by birth cohort as well
as by age-graded life events.
Janet Marquis, Director
We are planning two on-site EndNote5/6
workshops taught by Sara Kanning, who is the ACS EndNote expert, one
in December after classes end and another one in January the week before classes
resume. We will be sending you firm dates for these soon.
For those of you are unfamiliar with EndNote, here’s the product overview:
EndNote 6 Information:
Millions of researchers, scholarly writers, students, and librarians use EndNote
to search online bibliographic databases, organize their references and images,
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is a valuable all-in-one tool that integrates the following tasks into one
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Search bibliographic databases on the Internet
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images with text, and by providing built-in Microsoft® Word templates
for a variety of journals. Long known for Bibliographies Made Easy,
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