Skip to main content

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has awarded the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies‘ Karen Erickson and Lori Geist $2.5 million as part of its Stepping-Up Technology Implementation competition. The five-year project, titled “Building Bridges from Emergent to Conventional Literacy,” will allow the CLDS to engage in development, deployment, and evaluation of a comprehensive, open-source implementation model. The model will focus on literacy skills, such as reading, writing, language, and communication for students with significant cognitive disabilities and complex communication needs for grades three to five.

Bondurant Hall
Bondurant Hall

The model will build on Project CORE, a previously funded Stepping-Up Technology Implementation project at the CLDS, to create professional developmental implementation supports and instructional resources required to implement evidence-based practices in literacy with students with significant cognitive disabilities across educational settings.

Erickson, PhD, is the David E. and Dolores (Dee) Yoder Distinguished Professor of Literacy and Disability Studies and a professor in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences. Geist, PhD, is a research assistant professor with the CLDS.