Jeannette E. Fleischner Career Leadership Award Winners
The Jeannette E. Fleischner Career Leadership Award honors those who have advanced the field of learning disabilities through direct services, policy development, community service, research or organizational leadership throughout their career. Up to three awards may be given annually to recognize a variety of contributions. The award consists of (a) a $500 stipend, (b) up to $500 in travel expenses for presentation of the award at the DLD business meeting held during CEC’s annual convention, and (c) a commemorative plaque. Nominations for this award are due 15 October of each year.
Lynn Fuchs — 2024 & Doug Fuchs
Lynn Fuchs and Doug Fuchs are both Endowed Professors Emeritus at Vanderbilt University and Institute Fellows at the American Institutes for Research. Each of them conducts programmatic research on instructional methods for improving the academic outcomes of students with learning disabilities, on assessment methods for enhancing teachers’ instructional planning to address student diversity, and on the cognitive and linguistic profiles associated with reading and mathematics development. Each of them has published more than 500 empirical studies in peer-review journals, and each of them has been identified as one of the most frequently cited researchers in the social sciences. Their contributions to research practice have been honored with a variety of awards, including the American Educational Research Association’s Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award and the Harold W. McGraw, Jr Prize in Education, which “celebrates innovation, inspiration, and impacting education by recognizing outstanding leaders who have devoted their careers to closing gaps and accelerating educational opportunity to all students.”
David Bateman — 2023
David F. Bateman, Ph.D., is a Principal Researcher at the American Institutes for Research. He is a former due process hearing officer for Pennsylvania for hundreds of hearings. He uses his knowledge of litigation relating to special education to assist school districts in providing appropriate supports for students with disabilities and to prevent and to recover from due process hearings. He has been a classroom teacher of students with learning disabilities, behavior disorders, intellectual disability, and hearing impairments. Dr. Bateman earned a Ph.D. in special education from the University of Kansas. Over the past 25 years he has either been a hearing officer or consultant on over 990 special education lawsuits. He has recently co-authored the following books: A Principal’s Guide to Special Education, A Teacher’s Guide to Special Education, Charting the Course: Special Education in Charter Schools, Special Education Leadership: Building Effective Programming in Schools, Current Trends and Legal Issues in Special Education, and A School Board Members Guide to Special Education.
Charles MacArthur — 2022
Charles A. MacArthur is a professor specializing in special education and literacy in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. His major research interests include writing development and instruction for struggling writers, development of self-regulated strategies, adult literacy, and applications of technology to support reading and writing.
He is currently principal investigator (PI) of a $3 million 5-year project to evaluate Supporting Strategic Writers, a writing curriculum for college basic writing classes, which was developed under a prior grant. Previous major federally-funded research projects have focused on writing instruction in first grade, decoding instruction in adult education, development of a writing curriculum for students with learning disabilities, writing strategy instruction, development of multimedia tools to support reading and writing, speech recognition as a writing accommodation, and project-based learning in social studies in inclusive classrooms.
He is co-editor of The Journal of Writing Research, previously served as editor of The Journal of Special Education, and currently serves on the editorial boards of several journals. He has published over 100 articles and book chapters and edited several books, including The Handbook of Writing Research, Best Practices in Writing Instruction, and Adult Education Literacy Instruction: A Review of the Research.
Stephanie Al Otaiba — 2021
Stephanie received her doctorate in special education from Vanderbilt University in 2000. She is a Professor and serves as the Patsy and Ray Caldwell Centennial Chair in Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University. She remains a Faculty Affiliate of the Florida Center for Reading Research where she previously taught at Florida State University. A former special education teacher, her research focuses on early literacy interventions for students with or at-risk for disabilities, response to intervention (RTI), multi-tiered systems of support, and teacher training. She enjoys teaching graduate students and mentoring doctoral students. Her research has been supported by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the Office of Special Education Programs, and the National Institute of Health (NIH). She is the author or coauthor of over 130 articles and chapters. She has served as the President of CEC’s Division for Learning Disabilities and currently serves on the International Dyslexia Association’s executive board. She is the editor of the Journal of Learning Disabilities.
Karen Harris — 2020
Dr. Karen R. Harris is ASU Regents Professor Emeritus and the former Mary Emily Warner Endowed Professor of Education. Her experiences tutoring inner city children in Chicago during high school significantly impacted her future and contributed to a lifelong commitment to social justice. She has worked in education for more than 40 years, initially as a general education teacher in a coal-mining town in West Virginia, and then as a special education teacher in Nebraska for students ages 13-21 with learning, emotional, behavioral, and/or cognitive challenges. Dr. Harris has chosen throughout her teaching and research career to work in schools in high poverty areas due to her commitment to improving teaching and learning for all students. Achieving equitable and quality education for all students is one important aspect of achieving social justice.
Her research focuses on validating instructional approaches derived from integrating multiple theoretical views and evidence-based practices, as well as effective PD for these approaches. Schools, administrators, and teachers Dr. Harris and her teams collaborate with are partners in studying improvements in teaching and learning. When an approach or set of strategies is proven to work, all teacher and student materials are provided free to all administrators, literacy and curriculum leaders, coaches, and teachers in these schools, as is practice-based PD at no cost.
Steve Graham — 2020
Steve Graham is a Regents and the Warner Professor in the Division of Leadership and Innovation in Teachers College. For 42 years he has studied how writing develops, how to teach it effectively, and how writing can be used to support reading and learning. In recent years, he has been involved in the development and testing of digital tools for supporting writing and reading through a series of grants from the Institute of Educational Sciences and the Office of Special Education Programs in the U.S. Department of Education. His research involves typically developing writers and students with special needs in both elementary and secondary schools, with much of occurring in classrooms in urban schools.
Graham is the former editor of Exceptional Children, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of Writing Research, Focus on Exceptional Children, and Journal of Educational Psychology. He is the co-author of the “Handbook of Writing Research,” “Handbook of Learning Disabilities,” “APA Handbook of Educational Psychology,” “Writing Better,” “Powerful Writing Strategies for all Students” and “Making the Writing Process Work.” He is also the author of three influential Carnegie Corporation reports: Writing Next , Writing to Read , and Informing Writing.
Diane Bryant — 2019
Dr. Diane Pedrotty Bryant has served as the principal investigator on an early numeracy, response to intervention (RTI) grant, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences; the 3-Tier Mathematics Elementary and Secondary Intervention Project, funded by the Texas Education Agency; and the MSTAR intervention program, funded by the Meadows Foundation. Bryant was chosen to participate in the National Science Foundation-funded “Beginning Substantive Collaboration Between Mathematics Education and Special Education Symposium: Teaching Mathematics to Students Within the RTI Process.” She is the author or co-author of books, tests, and research articles on educational interventions for improving the mathematics and reading performance of students with learning disabilities and on the use of assistive technology for individuals with disabilities. Her research articles represent 20 years of working collaboratively with school districts and teachers on interventions for students with learning disabilities and students who are at risk for educational difficulties.
Asha Jitendra — 2018
Asha K. Jitendra is a Professor and Peloy Chair in Learning Disabilities in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. She previously served as Rodney Wallace Professor for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota for 10 years and on the faculty of Lehigh University for 14 years. Jitendra is the recipient of the Special Education Research SIG’s Distinguished Researcher Award from the American Educational Research Association; the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Oregon; the Excellence in Research Award and the President’s Distinguished Faculty Mentor Recognition from the University of Minnesota. She is a Research Fellow of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities. She has received several grants, totaling approximately $9 million, from federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to support her scholarship. Her scholarly contributions include over 100 publications in high impact outlets (e.g., Exceptional Children, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Remedial and Special Education, Elementary School Journal, Journal of educational Psychology, Journal of School Psychology, Learning and Instruction, Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness). She has published two research-based mathematics curricula and the IES Practice Guide, Improving Mathematical Problem Solving in Grades 4 through 8.
Jitendra has been the associate editor of the Journal of Learning Disabilities. Her research focuses on instructional design, specifically mathematics problem solving and reading interventions for students with learning disabilities; assessment; and textbook analysis. Jitendra is best known for her research on schema-based instruction (SBI) for solving word problems. Specifically, her work on SBI has evolved over the last 25 years to incorporate curriculum design theory and combine best practices in special education and contemporary mathematics education to improve mathematics outcomes for a wide range of learners (e.g., students with learning disabilities, students at risk and not at risk for learning difficulties).
Mary Brownell — 2017
Mary Brownell, Ph.D., is a professor in the College of Education at the University of Florida who has influenced policies and practices of educator preparation, professional development, and doctoral scholarship both locally and globally.
Dr. Brownell has outstanding work ethic and passion for students with LD. She has been endowed professorships, directed multple OSEP funded natioanl centers on special education personnel policies and proactice (COPPSE, NCIPP, CEEDAR), and has led efforts that have generated more than $65 million in grant funding. Dr. Brownell frequently publishes in top journals on the topic of LD and presents at national and international conferences for teachers, administrators, policymakers, and researchers.
Further, Dr. Brownell is dedicated to cultivating the next generation of special education teacher educators and researchers as evidenced by her two decades of mentorship of junior faculty at the University of Florida and other institutions. She has designed and directed multiple research and training projects that have provided funding for over 50 Ph.D. students in Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction, School Psychology, and Educational Psychology. Dr. Brownell is passionate about mentoring others to her own high standards, and has attracted many young scholars to join her training and research projects. A former student described Dr. Brownell as embodying “respect for the doctoral students, ethics as a researcher, rigor in the research process, and an appreciation for the impact and importance of the research she conducts.”
Joanna Williams–2016
Joanna Williams, PhD.,is Professor Emerita of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interest centers on reading instruction for struggling students, especially those with learning disabilities. She has developed and evaluated, in random controlled trials, a decoding intervention that emphasizes phonemic awareness training as well as interventions designed to improve the comprehension of narrative and informational text via instruction on text structure. She was an Editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology and the founding editor of Scientific Studies on Reading.
Rollanda O’Connor–2015
Rollanda O’Connor, Ph.D., is a Professor and Eady/Hendrick Chair in Learning Disabilities at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California at Riverside. She has worked to advance the field of learning disabilities as a special education teacher, scholar, professor. As a scholar, she conducted ground breaking work in: Early identification of reading disabilities, early intervention, phonological awareness instruction, reading instruction, response to intervention, and reading fluency. As a professor, she has prepared teachers to serve children with learning disabilities, guided and mentored graduate students in Ph.D programs, and worked to create a new generation of scholars. As a leader in the field, Randi has served as an officer in the AERA special education SIG and as president of DLD. She has also developed widely used instructional programs and practitioner texts on teaching reading to struggling students.
Chris Espin–2014
Christine Espin, Ph.D. is a Professor at Leiden University in the department of Education and Child Studies / Special Education, Learning disabilities (LD). Prior to her appointment at Leiden, Christine was a Professor at the University of Minnesota in the department of Educational Psychology / Special Education. Christine’s research interests include examining teachers’ use of progress data for decision-making; developing Curriculum-based Measures (CBM) to monitor progress of secondary-school students with LD in reading, writing, and content-area learning; developing reading and reading comprehension interventions for elementary- and secondary-school students with LD; and examining the ability of college-age students with disabilities to learn from lectures.
Charles Hughes–2014
Charlie Hughes, Ph.D.,i s professor of special education at Penn State University and Adjunct Senior Scientist at the University of Kansas Center for Research. He has worked in special education since 1971 working in schools for 12 years before moving to higher education. His research centers on developing, validating, and implementing instructional approaches designed to help students with learning and behavior problems succeed in school settings. He has published over 100 articles, books, and book chapters and made over 300 presentations in over 30 states and 10 countries.
Barbara Bateman–2013
Barbara Bateman, PhD, JD
Dr. Barbara Bateman’s passion for excellence, vigilance for what is best for children, and unfailing intellectual integrity highlight an exemplary lifetime of achievement in the field of special education. Across five decades, Dr. Bateman’s career has enhanced our profession in through the development of new concepts, publications, and leadership. She is Professor emerita at the University of Oregon and the author of over 110 publications, including several seminal works related to special education and the law.
Naomi Zigmond–2013
Naomi Zigmond has been an active special education researcher and teacher for nearly 50 years; her focus has been on the organization of special education services for students with disabilities in elementary and secondary schools and the impact of program organization on student achievement. Her work has focused on the various roles of the special education teacher (consultant, co-teacher, resource teacher, self contained class teacher, etc.) and how best to improve academic and social outcomes for students with disabilities in public schools. For the last decade, Dr. Zigmond has also led a team of researchers and practitioners in the development, production, distribution, scoring, reporting, and validation of the Pennsylvania Alternate System of Assessment, the statewide alternate assessment for students with significant cognitive disabilities.
Dr. Zigmond has published many articles, book chapters, and books. She spent 5 years as Editor of Exceptional Children. In 1997, Dr. Zigmond received the Research Award from the Council for Exceptional Children in recognition of research that has contributed significantly to the body of knowledge about the education of exceptional children and youth. In 2003, her scholarly work was recognized in the inaugural James M. Kauffman Publication Award in Special Education, And, in 2008 she was promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor of Education, the first faculty member in the 100-year history of the University of Pittsburgh, School of Education to achieve this rank.Naomi Zigmond of the University of Pittsburgh (emerita).
Jim Chalfant–2013
James Chalfant, Professor Emeritus, University of Arizona. In 1958 Jim organized the first joint agreement SPED program for 10 rural school districts in Illinois. In 1964 he joined the U.S. Office of Education to assist in implementing the first federal granting programs for funding special education research, personnel preparation, and state planning. Jim headed three national task forces for NIH and OSEP and prepared monographs addressing LD research and policy issues for identifying and serving LD students. He createdand researched innovative assessment-intervention procedures for children with cognitive learning and language disorders; learned helplessness; and visual impairment. Jim also pioneered building based teams (Teacher Assistance Teams). His work resulted in 71 publications. He prepared master LD teachers and doctoral administrators for leadership positions in local, state, and federal education agencies. Jim assisted 39 states and 12 countries institute and evaluate cutting-edge general and special education programs.
Marjorie Montague–2012
Marjorie Montague of the University of Miami (deceased).
Sharon Vaughn—2011
University of Texas Professor Sharon R. Vaughn received the Jeannette E. Fleischner Award for Outstanding Contributions to the field of Learning Disabilities at the annual convention of the Council for Exceptional Children in Washington, DC, 26 April 2011. The Fleischner Award, presented by the Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) of the Council for Exceptional Children, honors those who advance the field through a combination of direct services, policy development, community service, research and organizational leadership.
“Shari Vaughn fits our idea of a recipient of the Fleischner award to a T,” said Michael Gerber, President of DLD. “Not only has she served as a president of the organization and an editor of our journal, but she’s an eminent researcher who has addressed some of our discipline’s most thorny issues.”