;
Lorem Ipsum Dolor Spring 2016
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During the program's first 30 years, a strong foundation was established
through the leadership of Dr. Gideon Jones, a TVI who was recruited in 1963
from a resource room in Miami to prepare new TVIs at the undergraduate
level. After only a couple of years, in what was seen as a radical move, Dr.
Jones convinced the university to start an undergraduate O&M program and
soon Purvis Ponder joined him. Of the two, Dr. Jones was the organization
man, the one who handled the paperwork and attended to the details of
running a program. He wasn't much of a researcher, and recognizing that
weakness in the program, he brought Dr. Pearl Tait on board to strengthen
the education students received. The three of these professionals, all very
different, contributed to building what has come to be known as a solid
personnel preparation program.
When Dr. Sandy Lewis replaced Dr. Jones in 1993, she already had
established herself as committed to meeting the disability-specific needs of
students with visual impairments (now known as the Expanded Core
Curriculum; ECC). FSU's curriculum in place at the time, which was identical
to the curriculum offered when she attended San Francisco State University
in the early 1980s, consisted of the following five courses: Introduction to
Visual Impairment, Introduction to O&M, Literary Braille, Anatomy and
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