SDSU College of Ed Awarded $4.8 Million from U.S. Department of Education

To improve services and educational outcomes for children with disabilities, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs recently awarded San Diego State University’s College of Education with four grants totaling $4.8 million.

While $13.5 million was distributed nationwide to improve quality and increase the number of people who are fully credentialed to serve children with disabilities, SDSU was the only university in the nation to receive four grants.

The grants will provide direct support for SDSU graduate students pursuing careers in Special Education, School Psychology, School Counseling, and Speech Language Pathology. They are intended to improve services and educational results for children with disabilities.

Two of the grants focus on helping prepare special educators to work with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

“The number of students identified with Autism is at epidemic levels and these grants are extremely important toward meeting the needs of this population in our schools,” said Valerie Cook-Morales, chair of SDSU’s Department of Counseling and School Psychology.

Each of the following projects was awarded $1.2 million over four years:

• Facilitating Education and Empowerment of Adolescents with Autism for a Smooth Transition (FEAST): Prepare middle and high school special educators to work with diverse learners with Autism Spectrum Disorders including classroom experience in partner school districts including Sweetwater Union High School District and San Diego Unified School District.


• Transdisciplinary Approaches to Autism Spectrum Disorders (TAASD Project): Prepare speech-language pathologists and school psychologists in transdisciplinary approaches for services to children and youth with autism, their families and their teachers. Field experience will take place in partnership with San Diego City Schools.


• Collaborative Interventions to Improve English Learners’ Outcomes (Project CI2ELO): Prepare school psychologists and speech-language pathologists to collaborate with each other, as well as classroom teachers, to provide classroom-based literacy interventions for young English-learners at risk or identified with disabilities in partnership with a multilingual elementary school in San Diego.


• The SDSU Native American Collaborative Project: Prepare school counselors and school psychologists to work with Native American youth and communities in rural high-need and poverty districts. Students will learn in-depth cultural competency through seminars, institutes, professional development and specialized field experience with partner school districts in Mt. Empire and Valley Center.

www.sdsu.edu

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