Tennessee expands autism training for educators

Nashville, TN – Tennessee Department of Education has been awarded $10 million dollar grant to be spread over five years. The grant allows a continued 16-year partnership between the TDOE and the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center’s Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders (TRIAD) to supply free services for educators involved in kindergarten through high school.

The grant will also support education opportunities for educators as well as support TRIAD’s student services from July 2015-June 2020.

Associate director TRIAD and lead investigator of this grant said in a recent news release that the award ‘quadruples the budget of our professional development, education and behavior analysis team.’  This will allow them to create programmes that will support educators across Tennessee.

TRIAD plans to have 100 professional development and training opportunities annually to educators through statewide workshops, training, partnerships, and online education.

Associate professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Special Education and TRIAD director Dr. Zachary Warren told news outlet The Tennesseean that they will now be able to lead “statewide initiatives aimed directly at understanding what ASD means within our own borders”.

Contributed by Audrey L. Hollingshead.

Source: Melanie Balakit: The Tennessean website:  Vanderbilt’s autism training for TN educators expanded