VIDBE-Q Volume 66, Issue 2
14
Nominated by Tessa McCarthy
This year the Deborah D. Hatton Dissertation of the Year was awarded to Dr.
Rachel Schles a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and a new Assistant
Professor of the Practice of Special Education at the Peabody College of Education
and Human Development, Vanderbilt University. Dr. Schles is most deserving of
this award for her hard work on an outstanding dissertation which took important
steps to answer a long-standing, elusive question in our field—how many students
with visual impairments including blindness receive services in the United States?
Dr. Schles showed great dedication by completing a labor-intensive,
comprehensive, mixed-methods study to fully understanding the issues at hand so
that ultimately, we can best support students with visual impairments.
The results of Dr. Schles's dissertation provided a more detailed and accurate
lens through which we can view data on the number of students we serve which, in
turn, impacts policy and funding decisions at the federal and state levels as well as
the day to day operations related to serving students with visual impairments. As a
part of her work, Dr. Schles determined that the federal Child Count reports of the
Deborah D. Hatton Dissertation of the Year
Rachel Schles
