WKU News

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education has awarded WKU a $1.1 million grant to address the ongoing national, state, and regional shortage of personnel certified to serve K-12 students with high-intensity needs.

Project “Preparing Rural Educators and Professionals for Students with High-Intensity Needs” (PREP) is an interdisciplinary initiative led by Dr. Christina Noel of WKU’s College of Education and Behavioral Sciences. The collaboration includes the College of Health and Human Services and will combine graduate coursework and field experiences to prepare special education teachers and speech language pathologists to serve students with moderate and severe disabilities. Grant funding will support recruitment, tuition scholarships and graduation of 30 students in the Special Education and Speech Language Pathology programs at WKU. Graduates will be licensed to work with K-12 students with moderate and severe disabilities.

The five-semester program was developed to remove barriers associated with working in rural communities. Benefits include tuition support, supervised field experiences and connection to professional networks. Project PREP’s curriculum will provide flexible coursework, seminars, field work, and the opportunity for scholars to attend professional conferences. Once completed, scholars will graduate with a Masters of Education in Moderate Severe Disabilities (MSD) or a Master of Arts in Speech Language Pathology (SLP).

Project PREP is now accepting students for its first cohort set to begin fall semester 2020. Those interested in the program can now apply to the WKU Graduate School. Applicants should be prepared to submit a statement describing why they are interested in aiding rural communities. Deadline for entry is March 1, 2020. For information about Project PREP, email ProjectPREP@wku.edu.

The contents for this press release were developed under a grant from the U.S. department of education #H325190088. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. Project Officer, Anita Vermeer.

Contact: Bob Skipper, (270) 745-4295