Dr. Brandy R. Maynard is a director of the Dropout Prevention Institute and the recipient of the 2011 MCPER Postdoctoral Fellowship on Reading Disabilities and Response to Intervention. Maynard holds a Ph.D. in social work from Loyola University Chicago and a master of social work from the University of Michigan. She is a licensed master social worker and has 16 years post-master’s clinical and administrative experience in child welfare, juvenile justice, school social work, and mental health. Maynard has experience implementing and monitoring the fidelity of several evidence-based interventions in the juvenile justice and mental health systems. Her research interests include interventions with at-risk students, particularly in the areas of dropout, truancy, delinquency, and adolescent behavioral and mental health; adoption, implementation, and fidelity of evidence-based interventions; use and quality of research in education and social work; and systematic review and meta-analytic methods.
Institute Fellows and Researchers
Institute Directors
Brandy Maynard
Daniel Robinson
Dr. Daniel Robinson is a director of the Dropout Prevention Institute. Robinson's bio is available through this link.
Sharon Vaughn
Dr. Sharon Vaughn is the executive director of MCPER, director of the Reading Institute, and a director of the Dropout Prevention Institute. Vaughn's bio is available through this link.
Institute Fellow
Mark Dynarski
Dr. Mark Dynarski is vice president and director of Mathematica's Center for Improving Research Evidence in Princeton, New Jersey, and director of the What Works Clearinghouse for the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. Dynarski is a veteran in conducting randomized controlled trials for education research and has more than 20 years of experience conducting and managing research studies. He previously served as principal investigator of the dropout prevention area for the Institute of Education Sciences and has directed and contributed to some of the largest and most rigorous educational evaluations to date, including studies of the School Dropout Demonstration Assistance program, the Alternative Schools Program, Youth Fair Chance, the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, and the national study of educational technology interventions.
Anna-Mari Fall
Dr. Anna-Mari Fall joined MCPER as a research associate in 2009, shortly after completing her doctorate in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in special education and research methods from Virginia Tech. Prior to her doctoral studies, Fall received a master’s in special education from Virginia Tech. In addition, she was a special education teacher for 2 years in Hungary and Romania. During her doctoral studies, Fall’s research focused on issues related to educational equity, teacher quality, commitment, and retention. Her current research interests include school dropout, student engagement, interventions that enhance student engagement and decrease dropout, secondary data analysis, and multilevel modeling with latent variables. Currently, she is studying the effect of the school and family contexts on student engagement and dropout, using the Educational Longitudinal Study large-scale national database. Fall is the recipient of several awards, including the prestigious Dissertation Award from the Council of Exceptional Children Teacher Education Division and the Outstanding Graduate Student Award from the School of Education at Virginia Tech.
Andrea Flower
Dr. Andrea Flower is an assistant professor in the Department of Special Education. Flower completed her doctorate at the University of Washington in Seattle. Prior to studying at the University of Washington, she taught for several years in Southern California in multiple special education settings across the K–12 continuum. Her current research and teaching focus is on academic and social/behavioral instruction and interventions for students with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). More specifically, she is interested in the intersection of academic intervention and secondary- and tertiary-level positive behavior support interventions that promote improved outcomes for these students.
Cynthia Franklin
Dr. Cynthia Franklin is a professor and holder of the Stiernberg/Spencer Family Professorship in Mental Health at The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Social Work, where she is also coordinator of the clinical concentration for the master's in social work program. Franklin is an internationally known researcher, scholar, and leader in school mental health practice. She has authored more than 100 professional publications on topics such as how to prevent high school dropout; how solution-focused, brief therapy helps at-risk youth succeed in schools; and how to help pregnant and parenting youth stay in school and improve their attendance, academic achievement, and life goals by using the Taking Charge intervention. She is the author of several books, including The School Services Sourcebook: A Guide for School-Based Professionals, Taking Charge: A School-Based Life Skills Program for Adolescent Mothers, and Solution-Focused Brief Therapy in Schools: The 360 Degree View of Practice and Research, all published by Oxford University Press.
James Patton
Dr. James Patton is an independent consultant and adjunct associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin. Patton was formerly on the faculty at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has taught students with special needs at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels. His primary areas of professional activity are transition assessment and planning, life-skills instruction, adults with learning disabilities, science instruction for students with learning problems, differentiating instruction for students with special needs in inclusive settings, and individuals with disabilities who encounter the criminal justice system. He currently serves as an intellectual disabilities forensics specialist in death penalty cases throughout the country. Patton grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended St. Louis University High School. He earned his B.S. from the University of Notre Dame and his M.Ed. and Ed.D. from the University of Virginia.
Nicole Pyle
Dr. Nicole Pyle is an Assistant Professor of Adolescent Literacy in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at Utah State University. She is the recipient of the 2009 MCPER Postdoctoral Fellowship on Reading Disabilities and Response to Intervention. Pyle earned her doctorate of philosophy in education from the joint-doctoral program at Claremont Graduate University and San Diego State University, with a concentration in special education. She completed her master of arts degree in secondary curriculum and instruction. She has more than 8 years of experience teaching middle and high school students with disabilities. Her research interests include interventions for struggling adolescent learners, particularly in literacy and dropout prevention, secondary education, peer tutoring, inclusion, and English language learners.
Michael G. Vaughn
Dr. Michael Vaughn received his doctoral degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 2005 and is currently an assistant professor in the School of Social Work and holds appointments in Public Policy and the Department of Community Health, Division of Epidemiology, Saint Louis University School of Public Health. Vaughn's work has appeared in more than 70 publications, and his interdisciplinary research has appeared in such journals as Addictive Behaviors, American Journal of Public Health, American Journal of Psychiatry, Behavioral and Brain Functions, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, Criminology, Social Service Review, and Children and Youth Services Review. His current research includes examining the epidemiology of school disengagement in relation to sociodemographic, personality, and substance use variables; assessing the role of callous-unemotional and related psychopathic features in reading achievement and school academic success; and developing and testing a general biosocial public health model for research and intervention applications on school dropout and educational risk. To contact Vaughn, visit the Saint Louis University website.
Jade Wexler
Dr. Jade Wexler is an Assistant Professor in the Special Education department at the University of Maryland, College Park. Wexler earned her doctoral degree from The University of Texas at Austin in 2007 in special education (learning disabilities and behavior disorders) and has extensive experience directing research related to providing high-quality interventions for students with significant reading difficulties and students at risk for dropping out of school. She has developed and implemented several academic interventions for middle and high school students. Wexler also has coordinated large-scale studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, The Meadows Foundation, The Greater Texas Foundation, and the Institute of Education Sciences. She has also published several papers and chapters on adolescent reading and interventions for struggling readers. Her current research includes the following:
- Investigating effective response to intervention practices for older students with reading difficulties/disabilities
- Investigating effective methods to decrease dropout rates and increase school engagement for students at risk for dropping out of school
Principal Investigators
Greg Roberts
Dr. Greg Roberts is the associate director of MCPER. His bio is available through this link.
Researchers
Jason Aliperti
Maggie Cashdollar
Sarah Cattan
Meghan Coleman
Meghan Coleman is a doctoral student in the Department of Special Education. Coleman earned her bachelor of arts degree from Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and her master of science degree in education from Hunter College in New York, New York. She is a certified special education teacher with 4 years of teaching experience in special education. Her current research interests include teacher preparation, response to intervention, and dropout prevention.
Pamela Gray
Tracey Long
Leah Sayre
Leah Sayre is a research associate at MCPER, currently implementing the Preventing School Dropout With Secondary Students intervention. Previously, Sayre worked for MCPER as a reading intervention teacher for the Secondary Literacy Project. She earned her master’s in education with an emphasis in reading, reading specialist certification, and bachelor’s in English from California State University, Fullerton. Before her work at MCPER, Sayre taught high school English, reading, and theater arts in California.
Erica Scovill
Jennifer Wick Schnakenberg
Jacob Williams
Jacob Williams is a doctoral student in the Department of Special Education Administration. Williams earned his bachelor of science and master of special education degrees from Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. He is a certified special education teacher with 4 years of experience working with students with learning disabilities and students with behavioral disabilities in the middle grades. His research interests include interventions for children who have emotional and behavioral disabilities and school administrators’ use and knowledge of qualitative research. He is currently the project coordinator for the Texas Youth Commission project.