SPIES Staff

SPIES for Parents Staff

Sarah Rule, Project Director
Robert Cook, Project Manager
Barbara Lancelot, Project Coordinator
Heather Mariger, Technology Specialist
Kay Seo, Research Assistant
Connie Panter, Office Administration and Sales

SPIES Outreach Advisors

Sarah Rule
Project Director
July 1999 - July 2003

Sarah ("Sallie") Rule was director of the SPIES Outreach Project. She is Director of the Center for Persons with Disabilities (CPD), Professor of Special Education, and Adjunct Professor of Family and Human Development at Utah State University. She has 30 years of experience in serving children, youth and families in personnel preparation and curriculum development. Sarah's thoughts about Strategies for Intervention in Everyday Settings are based on her belief that everything that adults do with young children (and perhaps everything that they do in front of them) teaches something.

Research with an earlier intervention curriculum indicated that preschool teachers used many of the strategies illustrated in SPIES. However, they weren't necessarily aware of how to use them to help children develop specific abilities. Most adults who know a child well are aware of specific skills that would help that child in everyday living. Sarah hopes that SPIES will give adults a useful framework for planning how to teach those skills. Knowing how busy adults are in balancing work, home and (with luck) even leisure, she hopes SPIES will be easy to use in teaching and learning.

Robert Cook
Project Manager
July 2000 - July 2002

Robert earned his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Ball State University. His emphasis of study was in marriage and family issues. He is especially interested in nontraditional families and children with chronic illnesses. He has worked extensively with emotionally and behaviorally disabled children. Robert brought to this Project Coordinator position 20 years of experience in mental disability issues. He initiated, developed, and maintained numerous projects in his career. He has published articles and made presentations related to the study of severe mental illness.

Robert committed himself to maintaining the SPIES project as an up-to-date program designed to help educators and other professionals enhance their ability to work with preschool children who have special needs. Robert's goals for SPIES were to expand its accessibility in two areas. First, by increasing its presence on the World Wide Web and second, by developing a parent/caretaker focused SPIES curriculum with an emphasis on delivery of training and information directly to parents through the World Wide Web.

Barbara Lancelot
Project Coordinator
July 1999 - December 1999

Barbra Lancelot, M. Ed. is a doctoral student in Early Childhood Education, at Erikson Institute of Loyola University, Chicago. She recieved her Masters' training at Erikson Institute and worked for more than ten years as a Parent and Infant Educator, program manager and child development diagnostician in hospital and community settings in Chicago. As a researcher and writer, she has prepared training materials on play and literacy, program management, child and family assessment, drug exposed children, parent-child interaction, and developmental intervention

From 1990 - 99, Barbra worked as a consultant in Early Childhood and Special Education in Illinois, Wisconsin and Utah. She has provided training in infant and preschool assessment, family-centered services for children with disabilities, and assessment of children with various developmental risk factors, and child development guidance to adolescent mothers and their children. She has been an instructor in early childhood and special education in eight colleges in the Midwest and Utah.

Heather Mariger
Technology Specialist
September 1999 - July 2003

Heather Mariger was the Web-Developer and Technology Specialist for Project SPIES. She came to the Center for Persons with Disabilities through an unusual route. Classically trained in the Culinary Arts and Hospitality she has worked and studied across both the US and Europe. While working on her Masters Degree at Kansas State University, she became interested in the possibilities that the Internet promised for higher education. Her new interests led her to Utah State where she is currently working on her Doctorate in Instructional Technology and helping to develop and adapt Project SPIES for the World Wide Web.

Kay Seo
Research Assistant
January 2003 - July 2003

Before coming to Utah State University, Kay worked as Corporate Administrator at The Platinum Group, an investment bank in New York City. Kay has two Master's degrees, one in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at Old Dominion University, Virginia, and the other in International Politics in East Asia at Seton Hall University, New Jersey. She is currently completing a doctoral degree in Instructional Technology at Utah State University.

Connie Panter
Office Administration and Sales
July 1999 - July 2002