Carol Sue Englert Ph.D., Indiana University carolsue@msu.edu Carol Sue Englert is a professor of special
education. Her research interests include literacy
instruction for students at risk for school
failure with a specific focus on the examination
of discourse in literacy events. Her more recent
work involves a collaborative research project
with special education teachers to design,
implement, and integrate a literacy curriculum
emphasizing the role of oral and written language
in a discourse community.
Summer Ferreri Ph.D., Ohio State University sferreri@msu.edu Summer Ferreri is an assistant professor of
special education. Her primary research focus is
on the development, implementation and evaluation
of effective interventions to increase academic
success and decrease disruptive behaviors for
students with severe disabilities. More
specifically, her research utilizes the concepts
and principles of Applied Behavior Analysis and
single-subject research methods to investigate
efficacious interventions for individuals with
Autism Spectrum Disorder. She has conducted
research with children with special needs to
determine the most effective and least intrusive
methods to decrease disruptive, self-injurious,
self-stimulatory, pica, and aggressive behavior.
She has conducted research on behavioral
assessments of impulsivity in relation to
dimensions of reinforcement, temporal discounting,
reinforcement schedules, and conditioned and
terminal reinforcers with children with Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Harold Johnson Ed.D., University of Cincinnati hjohnson@msu.edu Harold Johnson is a professor of special education
(deaf/hard of hearing). His research focuses upon
how web-based technologies and resources can be
used to reduce isolation, facilitate
collaboration, recognize excellence and enhance
teaching/learning within K-20 deaf education. He
investigates how student learning in school can be
tied to student living outside of school. One of
his current projects concerns the use of a
“Virtual Professional Development School” (VPDS)
for deaf education. He is exploring how science
and mathematics teaching can be improved within
the VPDS and the subsequent impact of this
improvement upon students' learning, language and
literacy skills.
Troy Mariage Ph.D., Michigan State University mariaget@msu.edu Troy Mariage is an associate professor of special
education. His research interests are in the areas
of literacy instruction for students with mild
disabilities in elementary classrooms. He has
conducted work in early reading instruction,
writing instruction, and cognitive strategy
instruction that leads to self-regulated learning.
More recently, he has extended his work by seeking
to understand how to create schools as learning
organizations that create the capacity for
continuous learning and improvement. Currently, he
is conducting a study to explore how teachers can
provide concurrent academic and social support for
students with significant learning and behavioral
difficulties.
Cynthia Okolo Ph.D. Indiana University okolo@msu.edu Cynthia Okolo is a professor of special
education. Her research focuses on improving
content-area literacy for students with learning
problems and disabilities. She is especially
interested in ways in which instructional and
communication technologies can facilitate these
goals. Her current projects include a
collaboration with Freedom Scientific to develop
an instructional program that integrates
strategies for learning from text with a set of
literacy software tools. Another project is
examining the integration of literacy strategies
and technology in history classrooms. Most of her
work has been conducted in middle and high
schools and in diverse classrooms that include
students with and without disabilities.
Claudia Pagliaro Ph.D., Gallaudet University pagliaro@msu.edu Claudia Pagliaro is an associate professor of
special education (deaf/hard of hearing). Her
research focuses on mathematics instruction and
learning with deaf and hard-of-hearing students
(P-12). She is particularly interested in the
areas of problem solving and the influence of a
visual language (American Sign Language) on
mathematics understanding. Pagliaro has been the
PI/Co-PI on several federally-funded research and
teacher preparation projects including most
recently, Solving Story Problems in the Primary
Grades, which has brought new insight into
problem-solving instruction and learning with
deaf/hard-of-hearing elementary students; the
Building Math Readiness in Young
Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Children: Parents as Partners
development project, which helps parents to
prepare their pre-K/K deaf/hard-of-hearing
children for formal mathematics learning; and the
Pacific Island Learning Initiative (PILI) in Deaf
Education project, which prepares teachers for
deaf/hard-of-hearing students in Hawaii and the
Pacific Islands. Pagliaro has presented her work
nationally and internationally, and has numerous
publications in distinguished research and
practitioner journals as well as invited chapters
in textbooks.
Joshua Plavnick Ph.D., Michigan State University plavnick@msu.edu Joshua Plavnick is an assistant professor of
special education, director of the graduate
certificate program in applied behavior analysis,
and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst – Doctoral
(BCBA-D). His research focuses on applications of
behavioral and observational learning theories to
develop and evaluate instructional programming for
students with developmental and intellectual
disabilities. He is currently the Principal
Investigator for a series of studies examining the
effectiveness and utility of video-based
instruction to teach social behavior to
individuals on the autism spectrum. He is also
developing a comprehensive reading program for
school-aged children with autism that combines
computer-based and small group instruction. His
recent work includes examinations of video
modeling to teach language to previously nonvocal
children with autism and self-management
strategies to improve implementation of behavioral
programming by public educators.
Gary Troia Ph.D., University of Maryland gtroia@msu.edu Gary Troia is an associate professor of special
education. His research interests include the
connections between oral language and literacy in
typical and atypical learners, writing assessment
and instruction, and teacher professional
development in literacy. His recent work involves
examining alignment between states' content
standards and assessment frameworks in writing and
how alignment between these influences writing
outcomes and enables students to meet
postsecondary writing expectations. He also is
examining predictors of writing quality within a
multi-level linguistic framework to help
researchers and educators develop better
measurement tools for writing.
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