About the MRVI project
This project is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences and housed at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, CO. It seeks to create an evidence- and practice-based intervention for infants and toddlers with visual impairment and to assist their families in developing realistic goals in the areas of developmental mealtime skills such as using utensils and self-feeding, eating a variety of food choices, fostering positive communication between caretakers and babies, and creating positive mealtime environments. Teachers of Students with Visual Impairment who provide Early Intervention home-based services (TSVI-EIs) use an iterative process to implement the MRVI Intervention supporting families through mealtime routines. The process permits feedback to constantly adjust interventions based on best practices.
The MRVI Research Team
Dr. Kay Ferrell
Kay Ferrell, Ph.D. is Professor of Special Education, University of Northern Colorado (UNC) in Greeley. She is the author of Reach Out and Teach: Helping Your Child who is Visually Impaired Learn and Grow, and has taught all ages of individuals with visual and multiple disabilities, from infants through adults.
She holds a special interest in working with young children and their families, having written extensively for parents and professionals, and has published on topics including education, personnel preparation, distance education methodologies, and image description.
Dr. Ferrell has received numerous state and national awards for her work with and on behalf of children and youth who are blind and visually impaired, including the Migel Medal and Corinne M. Kirchner Research Award from the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB); UNC’s M. Lucille Harrison Award (the university’s highest faculty honor); the Mary Kay Bauman, Josephine L. Taylor, and Warren G. Bledsoe Awards from the Association for Education & Rehabilitation of the Blind & Visually Impaired (AER); the Ray McGeorge Award from the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado; the Alan J. Koenig Research Award in Literacy; the Virgil Zickel Award from the American Printing House for the Blind; an Alumni Award from the University of Pittsburgh; and the Alumni Award for Research in Special Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Dr. Jamie Erskine
Jamie Erskine, PhD, RDN, is a registered dietitian nutritionist who is a professor of nutrition and dietetics and the director of the School of Human Sciences at UNC. As Co-Principal Investigator, she works with Dr. Ferrell to oversee all aspects of the project. Dr. Erskine and Co-Investigators are working together to develop a tool to assess infant and toddler food and beverage intake, evaluate feeding skill development, and to create intervention strategies to support optimal nutrition, growth, and development of the study population. As a part of the research team her roles include interpreting outcome measurements and dissemination of findings.
Dr. Cathy Smyth
Catherine Smyth, Ph. D., Project Coordinator for the MRVI Intervention Project, has been a teacher of students with visual impairment for thirty years, many of those years as a home visitor in Early Intervention. She is committed to family-centered, routines-based practices, and has specialized in child development and observational assessment in her practice and her research experiences. She was a co-researcher for the original Gerber Foundation study that explored the development of mealtime skills in children ages birth to three with visual impairment. As the MRVI Intervention Project Coordinator, Cathy assists in all areas of the data collection and project creation, as well as facilitating direct communication with the study participants and families. She is also a doctoral student at the University of Colorado and is passionate about this extraordinary opportunity to engage in research with an amazing team of experts, practitioners in the field, and families to meet the needs in the area of mealtime routines.
Dr. Alena Clark
Alena Clark, PhD, MPH, RD, CLC is an Associate Professor at the University of Northern Colorado with extensive clinical and research experience in hospital and university settings. Her research interests include nutrition during pregnancy, infant nutrition, breastfeeding support, nutrition in child care centers and nutrition program planning for individuals with severe mental illness. Dr. Clark’s role on the MRVI Intervention is to assist with the iterative development, conduct nutrition training with the Early Interventionists participate in NCAST training and score feeding scales; assist with computing inter-observer agreement with video coders and disseminate the project through publications and presentations.
Dr. Hasan Zaghlawan
Co-Investigator Hasan Zaghlawan, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the undergraduate program in Special Education: Early Childhood at UNC. His area of research focuses on implementing the Routines-Based Interview (RBI) and Home Visit (RBHV) Model, promoting children’s engagement in naturalistic environments, and supporting social and communicative skills for young children with disabilities. Dr. Zaghlawan currently serves as member of the Routines-based Approach by McWilliam (RAM) Group, which is an international collection of experts in the Routines-based Model. Dr. Zaghlawan assists with the MRVI Intervention iterative development; conduct training with Early Interventionists; compute inter-observer agreement with video coders; and disseminate the project through publications and presentations.
Dr. Nana Phan Dewald
Nana Phan Dewald, Ph.D., is a graduate research assistant for the MRVI Intervention Project. Her research interests include young children with blindness and visual impairment, orientation and mobility, gross motor development, and telepractice. In addition to being a doctoral student, Nana is a certified orientation and mobility specialist in her 15th year of teaching at the Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind (USDB). She provides orientation and mobility (O&M) services to children aged birth to three years old in USDB’s Parent-Infant-Program for the Blind and Visually Impaired and school-aged children in several school districts across the state of Utah.
Zoe Morgese
Zoe Larsen Morgese was trained as a Speech/Language Pathologist at the University of Denver. She began her career in programs for children with multiple challenges including dual sensory loss. She then served as Co-Director and Communication Disorders Diagnostician for a Diagnostic Center through Western Kentucky University and later was a Clinical Supervisor as well as a Project Director for a federal grant serving children needing assistive/augmentative communication devices in Eastern Washington through Washington State University in Pullman. Zoe worked with adults while living in Florida for several years. Upon returning to the Denver area, she has worked primarily with young children ages birth to five and primarily with children with visual impairment and/or hearing loss. She was part of a three year grant funded by the Gerber Foundation in 2008 to study the development of feeding skills in children ages 0-3 with visual impairment. Zoe presently works as Senior Speech/Language Pathologist at Anchor Center for Blind Children in Denver, Colorado and maintains a private practice serving children ages birth to three.
Carol Spicer
Carol Spicer, OTR/L, has been practicing as a licensed occupational therapist for the past 40 years in pediatrics. Her experiences include 13 years in the neonatal intensive care, developmental, and high risk follow up clinics. She worked with families and young children at Anchor Center for Blind Children for 14 years, where she was the primary investigator for the original Gerber Research that was the pilot study for the MRVI Intervention. She is currently employed at Children’s Hospital Colorado involved in the Pediatric Oral Feeding clinic, Dysphagia Management and Swallowing clinics, and is actively involved in evaluation and treatment of feeding issues.
Carol is neurodevelopmentally trained and currently uses Marsha Dunn Klein’s,“Get Permission Approach to Eating”. Her passion has always been to assist families with complex feeding issues and to make family mealtimes a pleasant experience.
Carol Puchalski
Carol Benson Puchalski is a Registered Psychotherapist with a background in Developmental Psychology. She has worked with infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and their families for over thirty years. Currently she is passionate about helping families with sleeping issues, feeding behaviors, and behavioral issues unique to children with special needs including those with sensory loss.
Carol has her B.A., Cum Laude, and M.A., Pediatric Psychology from the University of Colorado. She has taken many training sessions over the years including the Pyramid Plus Approach, Partners in Parent Education, and continues to take trainings in sleep development and early childhood mental health consultation. Carol has co-authored several journal articles about birth to three year olds with sensory loss and enjoys presenting at conferences and workshops.
Dr. Laura Pickler
Dr. Laura Pickler is a family physician and clinical geneticist with an active clinical practice serving children and young adults who have eating challenges including those with genetic conditions and inborn errors of metabolism. She has completed two medical fellowships in Child Behavior and Development and Clinical Genetics. Since 2007, Dr. Pickler has led the Children’s Hospital Colorado Feeding and Swallowing program as medical director. She also is a founding member of a national group committed to ensuring quality, family advocacy and research in feeding and swallowing disorders. She is a frequently requested national speaker who teaches and mentors students at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in her spare time. Grant responsibilities include reviewing medical records of child participants and assisting with MRVI intervention iterative development.
Dr. Rose Shaw
Rose Shaw, PhD, is a statistician who is part of the Research Team. She is a self-employed statistics, psychometrics, research design, database design, and data analysis consultant. She also works as an external evaluator.
Jamee Calisa
Jamee Calisa, B.S., Graduate Assistant, is a graduate student in dietetics who provided literature searches to support manuscript development regarding dietary intake outcomes of the MRVI study 5. She reviewed data reporting for accuracy and to assess limitations of the BEET IT assessment tool.
Aaron Dewald
Aaron Dewald, M.S., M.Ed., is the technology consultant for the project. He constructed data collection tools and information dissemination websites. He is also a PhD student at the University of Utah pursuing a doctorate in educational psychology.
