ICI in the News

FYI, the Institute on Community Integration Staff Newsletter

The following are lead articles that have appeared in the Institute's monthly staff newsletter, fyi, during the past six months, profiling Institute projects and activities. Older stories may be found in the fyi Archive of Past Issues.

NCEO: Working Nationwide for Students with Disabilities and Educators
(January 2016)
As President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act on December 10th, Martha Thurlow was meeting with several states to ensure that students with disabilities who are English learners are appropriately identified and served. It’s this kind of careful, ground-level work that the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) at the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) has been doing for over 25 years with one goal in mind: improve the nation’s ability to educate students with disabilities and help them succeed. …
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Telehealth at MN LEND: Delivering Communication and Behavioral Support
(December 2015)
This fall, the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities Program (MN LEND) of the Institute on Community Integration began participating in an innovative project to implement telehealth (e.g., video conferencing) to improve access to Functional Behavior Assessment and Functional Communication Training for families in Minnesota and western Wisconsin needing in-home support. The MN LEND Telehealth Training Project, a collaboration with Mayo Clinic in Rochester and the University’s Special Education Program in the Department of Educational Psychology, is designed to improve access to high quality assessment and intervention related to early communication needs for children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families, including those outside the Twin Cities. The MN LEND joined in this ongoing work of Jennifer McComas and Frank Symons, faculty in the Department of Educational Psychology, LEND Fellow Jessica Simacek, and Dr. Breanne Byiers, Research Associate in the Special Education Program. The MN LEND brings a train-the-trainer model to the partnership that will enable service providers to deliver in-home support services to families; the model trains agency staff to supplement their services with telehealth parent coaching and follow-up. …
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New National Center at ICI Examines Quality-of-Life Measurement
(November 2015)
Are you living where you want, with whom you want? Are you doing the type of work you want to do? Do the services and supports you receive help you achieve your goals in life? These are some of the questions that, when asked of people with disabilities, provide information about their quality of life as seen from their perspectives. Ensuring that information of this type can be gathered in a reliable and valid manner is a key part of the work of the new Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Home and Community Based Services Outcome Measurement (RRTC/OM) at the Institute on Community Integration (ICI). …
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ICI 30th Anniversary Celebration on November 10 at McNamara
(October 2015)
“We believed that the world was changing and that it should be our mission to push the boundaries of innovation in advancing the ideal of full inclusion for people with disabilities in all walks of life,” says former University of Minnesota president Bob Bruininks, recalling the founding of the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) in 1985. “That focus put us in the forefront of the whole inclusion and community integration movement that really had its origins in the early Civil Rights movement, and the Rehabilitation Amendments of the 1970s.” …
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ICI Partners with Siberian University to Improve Inclusive Education in Russia
(September 2015)
The Institute on Community Integration (ICI) is partnering with Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University (KSPU) in Siberia to improve the inclusion of Russian students with significant cognitive disabilities in elementary and secondary schools. Through the Global Signature Grants Program of the U of M College of Education and Human Development (CEHD), and the Eurasia Foundation’s U.S.–Russia University Partnership Program, ICI’s Brian Abery and Renáta Tichá have now received additional funds to help grow an existing collaboration between ICI and KSPU that resulted in establishment of the International Institute on Progress Monitoring (IIPM) in Fall 2014. The new funding will go toward supporting ongoing academic and cultural exchange of ideas, research, priorities, and policies between the two countries, and help sustain IIPM long-term. …
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Five Big Anniversaries at ICI This Year
(August 2015)
This is a big anniversary year at the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) – and it starts with ICI itself, which is celebrating its 30th year (watch for the story on ICI’s upcoming 30th year celebration in the October issue of FYI). The Check & Connect program at ICI is marking an anniversary – its 25th – with a national conference at the McNamara Alumni Center in October (FFI, visit http://checkandconnect.umn.edu/conf). But wait, there’s more – three more 2015 milestone anniversaries at ICI! Here are the details…
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Additional News

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See archive of past issues of fyi