ACRES Conference

These are the authors of the ACRES monograph: "Online Education in Special Education" Front row: Connie Baird, Cathy Galyon Keramidas, Belva Collins, Karen Collucci; Second row: Jane Pemberton, Harvey Rule, Joan Sebastian, Barbara Ludlow, Sue Steinweg; Back row: Michael Duff, Kay Bull, Kate Mitchem, Kevin Miller, Elizabeth Doone, and Karen Colucci

The Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling (EDSRC) hosted the annual conference of the American Council of Rural Special Education (ACRES) in March 2006. The conference marked the return of the national organization to Kentucky, the state from which it originated. It was also the first time that the UK College of Education held the conference.

Highlights of the conference included:

A pre-conference workshop in which colleagues shared their approaches to distant learning education. Because of its emphasis on distance learning in general, the workshop was offered to faculty throughout the University of Kentucky. The workshop included an overview of web-based preparation programs, demonstrations of on-line courses, and a panel discussion on distance learning strategies across disciplines.

During the awards ceremony, Cathy Galyon Keramidas, a doctoral student in the Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling, received the first ACRES doctoral dissertation award. The award will fund data collection for her research to help complete her dissertation. She will present the results at the 2007 conference in Billings, Montana.

Cathy is currently working as a visiting professor at West Virginia University while completing her dissertation. She will assume a full faculty position in the fall. She hopes to defend her dissertation, investigating the use of assistive technology with preschool students in rural West Virginia, in 2006.
The ACRES Conference also featured two keynote speakers for Thursday and Friday morning. Ray Corns, a retired Kentucky circuit judge and humorist, gave a light-hearted address about the life benefits of laughter. He also touched on his landmark court ruling that declared Kentucky’s funding of elementary and secondary schools unconstitutional, a decision the Kentucky Supreme Court upheld and led to the adoption of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990.

Dr. Diane Browder, the Snyder Distinguished Professor and doctoral coordinator of Special Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, was the keynote speaker on Friday morning breakfast. She gave a content-oriented presentation entitled General Curriculum: How to Access the Content and Assess Achievement for Students with Disabilities.

A general session on the last day of the conference featured a panel of rural Kentucky parents of children with disabilities. UK professor Jennifer Grisham-Brown moderated the panel.

The conference concluded with Belva Collins beginning her term as the new ACRES chair. She is taking over for departing chair Kevin Miller, of the University of Central Florida.

The ACRES Conference co-chairs, John Schuster and Belva Collins, express their thanks to the following College of Education personnel on the conference planning committee and credits them for its success: Connie Baird, Margaret Bausch, Bill Calderhead, Jennifer Grisham-Brown, Sarah Hawkins, Dee Hill, Lee Ann Jung, Cathy Galyon Keramidas, Sally Miracle, Tonya Sleet, and Don Stenhoff.