When nearly 24,000 MTSU students return for the fall tomorrow, they have a chance to take classes no one else in the country can take.
The new coursework focuses on children with autism spectrum disorder, and when it comes to training, MTSU’s College of Education and Behavioral Science is “very cutting edge,” education professor Jim Calder said.
Open to master’s-level students, an introduction to the autism-related classes was originally offered last spring and Project HELP’s Bobbie Young was in that inaugural class.
“The class really taught a lot about identifying the characteristics of children and assessments to identify if you think your child might have autism,” Young said.
Young is an early intervention teacher at the MTSU-sponsored program, an early intervention effort that offers services free of charge to families who have very young children with developmental delays or disabilities.
And even though Young specializes in treating children with autism, this was her first chance to take a course solely on the topic.
“I learned a lot of techniques in this class to help children with their day-to-day skills and adaptive skills,” she said.
“They gave us a lot of resources to reflect on and Web sites to research and the book was great,” she added.
MTSU faculty member Lesley Craig-Unkefer, who has an extensive background and research experience in working with children who have autism, teaches the new classes.
Although Craig-Unkefer joined the faculty only last year, already she has developed new coursework that focuses on working with children with ASD.
The new curriculum that Craig-Unkefer developed is for those professionals, like Young, who work with children with ASD and their families. And already, there is discussion that MTSU is positioned to create an ASD teaching certification, when Tennessee allows such a certification.
“The state of Tennessee does not have currently have a licensure or certificate for ASD at this point,” she said, “and I don’t know when that will occur, but in preparation for that, I would like to get more of our ASD courses up and running.”
Beyond the current ASD offerings Craig-Unkefer teaches, there are plans for an ASD practicum, she noted, and “because there is an interest, we’ve discussed developing one-hour online courses that have specific (ASD) content that would reach out to individuals in more rural areas or who would just prefer to get that information online.”
And Craig-Unkefer is already working on expanding the course options.
“We already have a course on the books, Working with Families (SPED 6720), which Dr. Craig-Unkefer would likely tie into (to create the ASD certification),” Calder said. “And she plans on developing three, and so if you combine that with what she already has developed, it would be a total of 15 hours.”
According to Autism Connection, ASD is “a collective term given to a group of bio-neurological developmental disabilities that impair the way that individuals interact and communicate with others.”
With symptoms that span from mild to severe, ASD generally is diagnosed when individuals are young, said Craig-Unkefer, who specializes in training teachers and other professionals – including social workers and counselors – how to recognize autism spectrum disorders in children and work with ASD learners.
“We feel very, very cutting edge in this respect, because we have an expert. …” he continued “(Craig-Unkefer is) an expert in preschool education, special education and an expert in the area of autism spectrum disorders – someone people will learn a great deal from and someone who not only has not a knowledge of those kinds of disorders, but a working knowledge from hands-on experience of working with these children and their teachers.”
Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com. |
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