Life Span Institute Connections

Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025

From the director  |  Collaboratory preview |  Functional Fitness |
Project MounTaiN  |  LSI people in the media | News and social metrics 

Dear LSI’ers,

I’m writing to wish everyone a safe, restful, and happy holiday season.  This year has brought many unprecedented (and unwelcome) challenges to our research community, and I remain impressed by the remarkable grace, poise, and determination of LSI staff, students, and scientists in response to all that has transpired. Thank you for all you have done, and I look forward to working with all of you in 2026.

And, in that spirit, I encourage all of you to come to the annual LSI Collaboratory on January 15. We’ll be talking about ways to get our message and stories out to the communities that we serve and building external recognition to support continuation of our mission.

Happy holidays, and best wishes for the new year.

John Colombo, PhD
Professor of Psychology
Director, Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies

Life Span Institute staff, researchers and graduate students are invited to the 2026 Life Span Institute Collaboratory, which will be offered in person at the Jayhawk Welcome Center from 9:30-4:30 on Thursday, Jan. 15.

An invitation to register was sent this week via email. If you missed the email or need to request a link to register, contact Office Manager Alyssa Cool. Registration is requested by Dec. 22. 

The theme this year is "Raise the Volume," a call to action as we look ahead to next year. The day includes:

A community-based project that builds on years of research showing benefits of exercise for people with disabilities will expand through a federal grant that will help KU researchers partner with fitness facilities adapted for people with mobility disabilities. 

Funded by a three-year, $750,000 grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, the project will be led by Lyndsie Koon, assistant research professor at the KU Life Span Institute.  

Koon's research will recruit individuals ages 18 to 74 years old who have mobility disabilities to participate in a functional fitness program. Like the prior, smaller pilot studies that preceded this project, the group exercise and training take place at area functional fitness facilities and are led by a coach with training in adaptive exercise.   

The project will recruit individuals to participate at CrossFit locations including Kaw Valley CrossFit, 1204 E. 24th St., which is offering a public ribbon-cutting and open house on Friday, Dec. 19, at 4 p.m.

Additionally, it’s anticipated that the newly expanded facility will host space for Assistive Technology for Kansans. The satellite location will provide an off-campus community setting for ATK researchers and staff to meet with individuals about resources such as specialized equipment for people with disabilities. 

 👉 Read more the project and partnerships. 

KU graduate student Jennifer Whiteford Houk describes teaching as a creative field. “There’s lots of thinking on your feet, lots of moving and changing and adapting to the direction and the needs of children,” she said. “Children keep me creative.”

That source of creativity also extends to Whiteford-Houk's son. He recently took inspiration from what his mother learned in her master’s degree program at the KU School of Education and Human Sciences to make toys accessible for children with disabilities.

Whiteford Houk, a Parents as Teachers home visitor in southeastern Franklin County, Kan., expects to graduate from KU in August 2026 with help from a federally funded program called Project MounTaiN. The two-year program, which is led by School faculty and researchers at the KU Center on Disabilities at the Life Span Institute, provides financial support and resources to educators working to earn their master’s degree in Early Childhood Unified Special Education, which combines special and general education.

Through the program, students such as Whiteford-Houk develop expertise in intensive and evidence-based interventions, inclusion and family-centered practices, among other areas, said Maria Hugh, assistant professor of special education and project director. Graduates are prepared to work with students with one or more high-intensity support needs, including students with Individual Education Plans or Individual Family Support plans.

After specialists from Assistive Technology for Kansans (ATK) at the Life Span Institute introduced Whiteford Houk and her classmates to technology and tools for young Kansans with disabilities to learn, play, and grow, she thought of her 9-year-old son, Fox Houk.

Whiteford Houk was intrigued, and it got her thinking. How hard could it be to create more adapted toys for more kids? 

 👉 Read more about Whiteford Houk's experience.

LSI investigator Jenny Kurth, who is professor and chair of the Department of Special Education, and Assistant Professor Lisa Didion, wave to the crowd at the KU Women's basketball game during the Spotlight on Faculty Excellence program.

Lisa Didion, assistant professor and an investigator with the KU Center on Disabilities, was recognized at a December KU women's basketball game as part of the Spotlight on Faculty Excellence. The series highlights "faculty members who have made significant contributions to society, their respective disciplines, and the local and/or university community." View video through KUCD social media.

Research authored by Tera Fazzino was cited in the article "The Big Tobacco Playbook Comes for Your Oreos" (login required) published this month in The Atlantic.

Inside Higher Ed published an article about the expansion of the TPE program originally developed by KU News, bringing it to a national audience. A Kansas News Service journalist subsequently saw the article and reached out to talk to LSI communications staff, leading to an interview with Dana Lattin, research project director, about the project. The KNS broadcast was distributed through Kansas Public Radio and its affiliates. 

Research by Trina Spencer, director of Juniper Gardens Children's Project, and colleague Megan Kirby, was promoted by Science Featured in "This Easy Method Helps Children with Autism Tell Better Stories." 

This fall and into the holiday break, several Life Span Institute units have been in the process of moving from one location to another, coordinated by Office Manager Alyssa Cool. One of the largest shifts has involved boxing up the labs, offices and conference spaces to move out of the Wakarusa Facility and into Youngberg Hall. Researchers and staff associated with the Center for the Advancement of Research on Eating Disorders (CARE) and the Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training (KCART) will be settled in Youngberg for 2026. Additionally, the Assistive Technology for Kansans team is moving from the first floor to the fourth floor of the Dole Human Development Building. 

Each month, hundreds of people visit the Life Span Institute website looking for resources, to browse a news article, or engage with social media posts across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Bluesky. The web traffic, news distribution and social media performance is analyzed and put into a monthly report.

Looking more broadly across this fall, web analytics show that we have visitors whose internet service providers are traced to several countries outside of the United States, including China and Singapore, which showed 4,900 and 3,900 visitors, respectively, from September to the end of November. 

Our most viewed news stories on the Life Span Institute website over the last three months have been “5 barriers impacting people with disabilities,” from 2023 (2,480 views); “Q&A with researcher Tera Fazzino,” also from 2023 (444 views); and three from 2025, “Reauthorization of Autism Cares Act to provide almost 2 billion for autism programs and research,” (285 views); “Intervention and assessment tools target overlooked area of literacy development,” (257 views), and  “What is FAIR: An overview of an alternative to the 15 percent F&A cap,”  (234 views). 

News articles from the Life Span Institute developed by strategic communications staff or by KU News in the past few months have been published nationally and in Kansas media including the Kansas Reflector, the Lawrence Journal World, and by Kansas Public Radio. 

For social media, total followers across all platforms increased 42% from this time last year. This is an average increase of about 3% a month, a significantly higher rate than the average 1% increase reported by the firm Hootsuite for most U.S. social media accounts.  

Social media posts brought an average of 244 visits to the Life Span Institute website per month, often through links to news articles and resources. Of these, 68% came from users in the U.S. Users in other countries included Spain (6%), Singapore (6%), Ireland (5%), Sweden (4%), and Brazil (2%), among others.

Meta has started testing limiting external links, which could affect business pages such as the Life Span Institute's Facebook page and other KU pages in the future, unless they opt to pay a monthly fee. Staff are monitoring the issue and will provide updates in 2026. 

Connections is produced by strategic communications staff at the Life Span Institute for affiliated researchers, staff and students. 

Writing and editing by John Colombo, Jen Humphrey and Christina Knott. Photos by KU Marketing, Jennifer Whiteford Houk, Christina Knott, Drew Rosdahl, and Alyssa Cool. Web graphics by Christina Knott.

Please submit news, kudos, achievements and other items for consideration here.

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