September 20, 2017
Special education scholars Greenwood, Carta to present at College of Education’s annual distinguished lecture series
The College of Education has invited nationally recognized University of Kansas special education scholars Charles Greenwood and Judith Carta to present the 2017 Distinguished Educational Lecture Series at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 28 in Forum Hall at the K-State Student Union. The event, which will be streamed live online, is free and the public is invited to attend.
Greenwood and Carta will present "Doing Science, Doing Good! 50 years of Research at Juniper Gardens Children's Project."
Greenwood is a professor of applied behavioral sciences, senior scientist with the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies and former director of the Juniper Gardens Children's Project. Carta is a professor of special education, senior scientist with the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies, interim director of the Juniper Gardens Children's Project and director and principal investigator of Bridging the Word Gap Research Network.
Warren White, K-State College of Education professor of special education, counseling and student affairs, said Greenwood and Carta have written extensively on a breadth of issues concerning low socio-economic status and its effects on education.
"Drs. Carta and Greenwood are pioneer and premiere educational researchers," White said. "Their work has been incredibly varied over the years and has included infants, children, families in poverty, children and youth with disabilities, and instructional interventions such as classwide peer tutoring. It is an honor to welcome Drs. Carta and Greenwood to campus."
The Juniper Gardens Children's Project started in the mid-1960s when citizens of northeast Kansas City, Kansas, and University of Kansas faculty wanted to address child development concerns within the low-income community. Greenwood and Carta have brought in nearly $40 million in external funding over three decades and produced award-winning research, with many of their practices adopted by schools across Kansas and the nation.
Greenwood has broad research methodology interests including single case research designs and randomized control trials, multilevel and growth curve analyses — univariate and latent models — and event-level conditional probability analysis. He led development of the current multilevel prevention-intervention pilot study plan for the Bridging the Word Gap Research Network and mentored more than 60 postdoctoral associates, many now contributing scientists and field leaders. He has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on multiple research grants from the National Institutes of Health, Health Resources and Services Administration and U.S. Department of Education and published more than 20 books and 200 research publications.
Carta focuses on developing evidence-based intervention practices, multitiered systems of support to promote children's language, literacy, and social-emotional outcomes and validating parenting interventions focused on vulnerable populations and their effects on young children.
Both speakers are recipients of the Higuchi Award for Applied Science and University of Kansas' Leading Light Award for researchers receiving more than $1 million dollars in external funding awards. The distinguished researchers' agenda at the Juniper Gardens Children's Project has been at the forefront and crossroads of major developments in the conceptual frameworks, procedures and practices used in the fields of applied behavior analysis and special education. For more information about the researchers, Greenwood's CV and Carta's CV are available online.
Many have trained at Juniper Gardens, including K-State College of Education Professor Emerita and former Associate Dean Linda P. Thurston, who developed programs and practices for parents, including the nationally recognized Survival Skills for Women program and a home visit program for parents of young children with disabilities who lived near the gardens.
Juniper Gardens Children's Project is within the Kansas Children’s Campus of Kansas City and the current and ongoing research includes the Kansas Center for Autism, interventions to improve school readiness, using individual growth and development indicators measures for the very young, using mobile devices to enhance parenting intervention for at-risk families, using classwide function-based interventions to improve academic outcomes and parent-mediated strategies to promote infant-toddler language growth.
The Distinguished Educational Lecture Series was initiated in 2013 by the College of Education's associate dean for research to honor the achievements of educational researchers and bring them to campus to share with and inspire K-State faculty, students and the community. Notable speakers include Sonia Nieto in 2014, Chris Dede in 2015 and Kern Alexander in 2016.