LSI Connections newsletter for Friday, May 9, 2025

Happy Spring 2025 Stop Day

Have a news story, publication, event or staff highlight for us? Submit it by 5 p.m. May 22 here.

About 1 in 3 Kansas students doesn’t meet fundamental levels of reading. But without data about school and educator needs and readiness to expand their literacy instruction and resources, it’s difficult to fully understand what would help resolve the issue.

To help define needs across the state, a University of Kansas research team is visiting schools in all corners of Kansas to observe classrooms and conduct focus groups with educators, families and students. Information from the visits will be compiled and aggregated to create a picture of statewide needs.

Research professors Suzanne Myers and Jocelyn Washburn, both associate directors of the Center for Research on Learning (CRL) at the KU Life Span Institute, together with Haiying Long, director of the Center for Research Methods Consultation at the Achievement & Assessment Institute, have fanned out across the state in April and May as part of the state’s Blueprint for Literacy, approved by the Kansas Legislature and signed by Gov. Laura Kelly in 2024.

Read more about the CRL-AAI literacy project

In an effort to increase equity and economic mobility in Kansas City through a broad collaborative project, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation reached out to a nearby University of Kansas center with decades of experience addressing large, complex problems.

The Center for Community Health & Development (CCHD) at the KU Life Span Institute will serve as the third-party evaluator and provide a wide variety of educational and action support for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s Collective Impact Initiative (CII). Through a grant of $353,000, the foundation will fund CCHD’s role in the expansive effort, including work to support foundation staff and the project’s six coalition partners.

Christina Holt, assistant director of CCHD, said she is excited about the center’s involvement in the project and its potential to make a positive impact. 

“They had a need for a third-party evaluator for their new collective impact initiative, which is their signature initiative now,” Holt said. “They are working to transform economic conditions in the Kansas City metro region. It’s really an honor to be a part of it.” 

Read more about the Kauffman Foundation partnership with CCHD.

A nationally recognized professional development program that aims to improve the accuracy, quality and accessibility of autism diagnoses for families is now based at the University of Kansas and has the potential to expand autism screening in schools, mental health clinics and other settings.

The Global Autism Interactive Network (GAIN) supports clinicians, educators and other professionals who work with individuals who are or may be on the autism spectrum. Through a mix of online and in-person formats, the program provides specialized training in the use of gold-standard autism diagnostic tools, including the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition (ADOS-2) and the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R). More than 2,000 people across the United States and in several countries have been trained through GAIN since it was first established at the University of Missouri in 2019.

GAIN offers tiered professional development opportunities, including monthly interactive sessions, coding reliability training and advanced workshops. They are designed to support professionals at every level — from those new to autism assessment to seasoned clinicians seeking to deepen their expertise, said Kourtney Nigh, who leads GAIN at the Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training (KCART).

Read more about GAIN and Kourtney Nigh.

In coordination with communications staff, researchers at the Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training developed a statement that affirms the center’s dedication to conducting and advocating for science that pursues an understanding of autism, with the goal of improving the quality of life for autistic individuals and their families. The statement is available on the KCART website and will be the focus of a series of short animations delivered through Life Span Institute social media.

KU Center on Disabilities director Karrie Shogren spoke to NPR affiliate WMUK public radio at Western Michigan University about federal funding cuts to the project Charting My Path and its impact on the high school students. 

Data from the State of the States in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, led by Shea Tanis of the KU Center on Disabilities, was included by 25NewsNow (Peoria, Ill.), in an article about the state ranking 46th in the nation on spending for IDD services. 

Jennifer Kurth, chair of the Department of Special Education and an investigator at Kansas University Center on Disabilities, discussed with WDC News 6 in Washington, D.C., efforts to address the need for more special education teachers with a unified degree at KU. 

MindBodyGreen included research by Tera Fazzino of the Cofrin Logan Center in a recent article about avoiding hyper-palatable foods.

Meghan M. Davidson, director of the Comprehension and Language Learning (CALL) Lab, explained reading and literacy needs among autistic students, including challenges and opportunities for support, in the first of a new series of public blog posts LSI Strategic Communications staff have launched to explain research and projects. 

Gretchen Scheibel of Juniper Gardens Children's Project led a briefing to the Education Committee for the Maine State Legislature on April 14th reviewing a report she authored and recommendations to build a regional technical assistance center to support implementation of a state-wide Integrated MTSS framework. The work was also included in an article in the Maine Morning Star.

Trina Spencer, Juniper Gardens director, was interviewed by SLPNerdcast about her AAC Narrative Intervention research; episode available on YouTube. 

Kudos to Robin Shafer, who was recognized by the INSAR 2025 Scientific Program Committee for her poster presentation, "Autistic Individuals Show Increased Variability of Spatiotemporal Dimensions of Gait from Childhood through Adulthood,"  which was selected as one of the Top-Rated Abstracts at the conference held recently in Seattle. The distinction recognizes the high quality, scientific rigor, and contribution of the  work to the autism research community.

Congratulations to the KCART and Fragile X lab members and other attendees who raised more than $900 for the National Fragile X Foundation and the Autism Society of the Heartland at the April 2025 trivia night hosted by the lab groups. The Matt Mosconi team of KCART took home bragging rights as the group with the most points and trivia knowledge.

KUCD staff celebrated the premiere of the film The Ride Ahead with about 100 attendees and co-directors Dan and Samuel Habib at Liberty Hall April 28. More than a dozen KUCD staff were involved with planning and on the ground support for the event, which also was supported by 10 volunteers from the Self-Advocate Coalition of Kansas, KU Transition to Post-Secondary Education, and graduate students from KU Department of Special Education.

The Kansas LEND program celebrated trainees and their accomplishments at their capstone day on May 6.

480: the number of special education teachers Kansas seeks to meet needs.

60:  teachers trained through a federal project administered through KUCD

2: years teachers trained in the program commit to teaching in Kansas schools

View the video below: 

Beginning May 19, KU Faculty Affairs will offer Faculty Development Academies Week, a series of one-day, in-person workshops that offer faculty time to develop a core capacity in a chosen area. Participants are welcome to register for as many dates as they’d like. Register by May 12. Of note for LSI audiences: During Research & Innovation Day, Thursday, May 22, Kathy Bigelow, associate research professor, Juniper Gardens Children’s Project, will participate as a panelist and Jen Humphrey, LSI associate director for strategic communications, is co-facilitating a morning session on conveying research impact to public audiences. 

The series titles and dates are:

Monday, May 19: Global Engagement
Tuesday, May 20: Academic Mentorship
Wednesday, May 21: Academic Leadership
Thursday, May 22: Research & Innovation
Friday, May 23: Let's Write!

The GAIN program has announced a 3-day, in-person clinical training on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition (ADOS-2), 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. May 14 – 16, 2025 at the KU Clinical Research Center, 4350 Shawnee Mission Parkway in Fairway, Kan. The program will be led by Stephen Kanne, Ph.D., professor of clinical psychiatry at Cornell Medical College, and Kourtney Nigh, Ph.D., associate researcher at the Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training (K-CART). The ADOS-2 introductory/clinical training workshop will use a lecture format and demonstrations to introduce the basic principles of administering and scoring ADOS-2 Modules 1 through 4 and the Toddler module. Register here; more information is available through this flyer (PDF).

The next Lawrence Campus Town Hall will be 4 p.m. Monday, May 12, through the KU Provost Office website. Questions or topic suggestions can be made through the anonymous online form. 

Join Lisa Hallberg for the next REDCap meeting, held monthly on the 3rd Thursday of the month  on Zoom (passcode: 2025).

Staff from the Frontiers Clinical and Translational Science Institute recently shared information about how LSI staff and researchers can access resources to support recruitment, scientific editing, mock study sections, training programs, funding and more. A folder of materials is available here and includes the full slide presentation,  mock study information and a library of grant application language examples available for use.

Director John Colombo described indirect costs in a letter to staff published in a prior LSI Connections that summarized federal announcements about capping indirect costs to 15% for all new projects funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH).  A 15% rate is substantially less than institutions have received to reimburse for facilitating research; the rate usually is between 30% and 70%. Colombo's letter has been revised and updated into a blog post and graphic to help support researchers and staff who use seek to use their platforms to explain indirect costs and their critical role in conducting research. 

Federal Updates and KU, KU Medical Center Town Halls: Lewis Burke Associates presented "Advancing University Research in an Uncertain Federal Funding Landscape" to provide the KU community with information about the executive actions that have or may affect KU research across health, energy, defense, education and other areas. Video of the presentation and slides are available. At the KU Medical Center town hall offered Friday, May 9, leaders discussed announcements including a new announcement of a 15% cap on F&A for NSF grants, a 10 percent cap on DOE grants, and said that NIH has announced that no-cost extensions will no longer be “available easily” for researchers (NIH notice here).  Leaders also discussed ongoing court cases brought by organizations representing universities. Information will be shared with the KU Lawrence Campus at a town hall on May 12.

Collaboratory and autism conference videos available: Three videos from the 2025 Collaboratory are available to view through KU Media Hub: the panel on fostering successful collaborations and partnerships, the overview presentation from John Colombo, and the presentations from center directors. Additionally, videos from the 2025 Autism Across the Life Span are available on the Life Span Institute YouTube channel.

News and social media reach:  Do you need additional information dissemination metrics for your project after it's been promoted through news and social media efforts? Communications staff produce a visual report of webpage traffic, social media posts and news items monthly.  View reports for January, February and March.

Openings: Several KU Life Span Institute units have posted recent job opportunities. Please view the open positions and share with people in your networks:

Postdoctoral Researcher, KUCD

Office manager, KUCD

Research Project Manager, KUCD

Assistant Researcher, Cofrin Logan Center

Postdoctoral Researcher, Zhao lab (Pharmacy)

Assistant Research Professor, Project AI SCORE

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

Writing and editing by Jen Humphrey and Christina Knott
Image credits: Life Span Institute archives, Christina Knott, Adobe Stock, KU Faculty Affairs, Jen Humphrey

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

The University of Kansas prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, national origin, age, ancestry, disability, status as a veteran, sexual orientation, marital status, parental status, gender identity, gender expression, and genetic information in the university's programs and activities. Retaliation is also prohibited by university policy. The following persons have been designated to handle inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policies and are the Title IX coordinators for their respective campuses: Associate Vice Chancellor for the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX, civilrights@ku.edu, Room 1082, Dole Human Development Center, 1000 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS 66045, 785-864-6414, 711 TTY (for the Lawrence, Edwards, Parsons, Yoder, and Topeka campuses); Director, Equal Opportunity Office, Mail Stop 7004, 4330 Shawnee Mission Parkway, Fairway, KS 66205, 913-588-8011, 711 TTY (for the Wichita, Salina, and Kansas City, Kansas medical center campuses).

The University of Kansas is a public institution governed by the Kansas Board of Regents.