Who We Are & What We Do

Welcome

The Department of Special Education, Rehabilitation, and Counseling prepares professional educators in the fields of Special Education, School Psychology, Rehabilitation Counseling, and Counseling and Guidance. The department chair has a range of responsibilities to promote and support faculty, staff, and students in these endeavors. The department chair represents the department in the communities served by the institution as well as discipline-based professional communities. The chair is responsible for the development of the programs in the department with respect to assessment and accreditation, curriculum, instructionally related matters, and budget and resources.

With respect to department faculty, the chair is responsible for scheduling and workload assignments, supporting faculty professional development, and leadership in recruitment, appointment, and mentoring of faculty relative to retention, tenure, and/or promotion.

With respect to department staff and student assistants, the chair is responsible for leadership in their appointment, evaluation, training and support, as well as supervision.

With respect to students, the chair is responsible for ensuring admissions processes are clear and there are procedures in place to support student admissions to programs, coordinate programs of orientation and advisement to meet the needs of students, monitor student progress in conjunction with the faculty program coordinator for each program, foster and promote the development of student clubs in the department, respond to student requests for review and signatures on waivers, petitions, and related special student concerns, and respond to student initiated concerns and problems as appropriate.

The department staff members, in collaboration with the staff in the College of Education Jim and Judy Watson Student Services Center, provide superior service and support to students and faculty in all of the programs in the department. They are available in the office five days per week to support faculty in conducting department business and to support students with access to faculty advisement and program business. Students are encouraged to contact or visit the department office to access information regarding their program once they are admitted, submit documents for faculty or department chair signatures, or to obtain information regarding procedures for conducting program business. All business related to program and university admissions and credentialing or graduate degree completion requirements is conducted with staff in the College of Education Jim and Judy Watson Student Services Center and faculty program coordinators.

The department is proud of the qualifications, skills, achievements and diversity of the faculty. Qualified faculty members teach courses and supervise field experiences in graduate degree and credential programs. Full-time tenured and tenure track faculty have Doctorates in addition to significant field based experiences. Full-time faculty make significant contributions to the knowledge base in their fields through research and professional activity and they participate in service to the university, college, department, program, and the community. Part-time faculty members are carefully chosen based on their experience in teaching as well as in their professional field and evaluated regularly via the department personnel process. Visit our Faculty page for an introduction to the department faculty.