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Presented by Dr. Mary Carlson, Clinical Associate Professor, Educational Policy, Marquette University; Ann E. Millard, Clinical Assistant Professor, College of Health Sciences Department of Occupational Therapy, Marquette University; Michele Sheehan, Clinical Assistant Professor, Occupational Therapy, and Doctoral Capstone Coordinator, Marquette University; and Elyse Adler, Clinical Psychology Graduate student, Marquette University. Moderated by Dr. Amy Vaughan Van Hecke, Professor, Psychology, Marquette University

Drs. Sheehan and Millard from the Department of Occupational Therapy will discuss strategies to engage preschool children with autism, including how to handle sensory sensitivities at home using therapeutic tactics. Dr. Carlson from the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership will discuss how to adjust a child’s Individualized education plan to reflect the needs of children on the autism spectrum during this pandemic and how to improve virtual and at-home learning. Ms. Adler, a graduate student in Clinical Psychology, will provide some research findings and tips about helping school-age children and adolescents on the autism spectrum engage socially and safely over the internet.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Dr. Mary Carlson, Clinical Associate Professor, Educational Policy, Marquette University, considers herself to be a special education teacher, first and foremost. Before coming to Marquette in 2007, she taught students in every grade from K-12 in a wide variety of schools. She received her B.S. in Exceptional Education and her M.S. in Educational Psychology from UW-Milwaukee. She received her Ph.D. in Theology, Philosophy and Special Education from MU in 2016, with a dissertation titled “Special Education as a Moral Mandate in Catholic Schools,” and is a member of the USCCB Working Group on Special Education in Catholic Schools. She teaches in the College of Education, focusing on children with exceptional needs. Her publications center on marginalized groups in churches, schools and society.

Along with Amy Van Hecke and Wendy Krueger, Mary has been a recipient of the Way-Klingler Teaching Award and the Explorer Challenge and the President’s Challenge awards. The trio also created a support program for MU students with autism, On Your Marq, with a $450,000 gift. Along with others from the Challenge Awards, including Doris Walker-Dalhouse and Norah Johnson, Mary is a co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Autism Initiative and the MUSCLES summer camp for children on the autism spectrum. She is also a member of the Next Step Clinic for young children with developmental disabilities in central Milwaukee, and is active in the PEERS (trademarked) social skills program as part of the Autism Initiative.

Ann E. Millard is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Marquette University College of Health Sciences Department of Occupational Therapy. She received her bachelor’s degree in Psychobiology from the University of California at Riverside in 2000 and graduated from Loma Linda University with a Master of Occupational Therapy degree in 2003. She completed her post-professional Occupational Therapy Doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019. She holds a specialty certification from the American Occupational Therapy Association in School Systems. Ann has over 15 years of experience working as a full-time Occupational Therapist with ages 3 to 21 in a public school setting. Her clinical expertise is in the evaluation and treatment of children with developmental disabilities, Autism Spectrum Disorder, sensory processing concerns and multiple physical disabilities. She also has a strong background in early intervention, assistive technology, interprofessional practice, program and procedure development, behavioral intervention techniques and distance education.

Michele Sheehan graduated from Mount Mary University with a bachelor's degree in Occupational Therapy in 1994 and her post-professional Occupational Therapy Doctoral degree in 2018. She holds advanced certification in Sensory Integration and Praxis testing from the University of Southern California and Western Psychological Services. Michele has over 25 years' experience with the pediatric population ranging from clinic-based interventions focusing on sensory processing disorders, neurological disorders, autism, and developmental delays to school based occupational therapy practice. In the school setting, Michele has spent many years providing professional development to teachers and staff as well as presenting at the Early Childhood Today conference held at Lewis University in Romeoville, IL. Michele joined Marquette University in 2020 as a Clinical Assistant Professor and Doctoral Capstone Coordinator. For fun, Michele enjoys spending time with her husband and children, watching softball games, and cuddling with her fur babies, Maggie (Great Dane), Bailey (Irish Setter), and Nomar (cat).

Elyse Adler is originally from San Mateo, California. She received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania in 2016. After graduation, she worked for two years as a Junior Specialist at the UC Davis MIND Insititute in Sacramento, California where she was involved in the Autism Phenome Project, Higher Cognition, Emotional Development, and Language Processing Study, and Cognitive Control in Autism Study, working with children and young adults with autism. Elyse also worked with the MIND Institute's Social Skills program as a co-leader for the middle childhood and teen groups. Elyse currently is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program at Marquette University. Her research focuses on adolescents and young adults with autism. She is currently involved in projects studying the telehealth version of the PEERS program for both adolescents and young adults, as well as the Broad Autism Phenotype and mental health outcomes in young adults. Elyse is currently completing a clinical externship in neuropsychology at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

Dr. Amy Vaughan Van Hecke, Professor, Psychology, is originally from Canton, Mississippi. She received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. After a research internship at the University of Portsmouth, England, Dr. Van Hecke completed her doctoral work in Developmental Psychology with Peter C. Mundy at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Dr. Van Hecke then received a Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the National Institute of Mental Health to complete a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Dr. Van Hecke currently serves as President of the Executive Board of the Autism Society of Southeastern Wisconsin, a member of the steering team of the statewide Community of Practice on Autism and Developmental Disabilities, and a member of the Treatment and Intervention Advisory Committee at the Wisconsin Department of Health, Children’s Services Division. Dr. Van Hecke enjoys reading, traveling, holding an annual crawfish boil, co-leading a Girl Scouts troop, and cooking Southern food for her husband, her daughters, friends, and students in her spare time. Her undergraduate students particularly enjoy her brown-sugar baked bacon.

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Presented by Emily Raclaw, Director, On Your Marq, Office of Disability Services, Marquette University; Dr. Norah Johnson, Associate Professor, College of Nursing, Marquette University; Rachel Stanley, Clinical Psychology Graduate student, Marquette University. Moderated by Dr. Amy Vaughan Van Hecke, Professor, Psychology, Marquette University

Dr. Johnson from the College of Nursing will discuss physical health for individuals on the autism spectrum during the pandemic, including ways to engage healthcare providers in sensitive strategies for care. Ms. Raclaw from the On Your Marq college autism support program will discuss how to support college students on the autism spectrum during this pandemic and how to improve virtual and on-campus learning. Ms. Stanley, a graduate student in Clinical Psychology, will provide some research findings and tips about how older adolescents and adults on the autism spectrum engage socially over the internet.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Emily Raclaw, MS, LPC is the director of On Your Marq. She is a lifelong Milwaukee resident and brings over 10 years of disability in education expertise to the program. She has presented at several conferences and trained other college success programs on the topics of disability as diversity, neurodiversity, and programming.

Prior to coming to Marquette, Emily taught high school special education, worked as a vocational rehabilitation counselor, and coordinated a college success program for students with disabilities. She is an expert in program creation and development, as well as a disability advocate and professional. She is also a licensed professional counselor and utilizes those skills to ensure On Your Marq considers the whole student. Outside of work she spends time with her son and husband. She is a Disneyphile and loves to travel.

Dr. Norah Johnson is clinical professor in the College of Nursing at Marquette University. The aim of Dr. Johnson's research is the development of knowledge and interventions to decrease child challenging behaviors and improve the health of persons with developmental disabilities such as Autism Spectrum Disorder and their caregivers. She works with an interdisciplinary team as part of the Marquette Autism Initiative. She studies family care-giving stress, family functioning and quality of life as well as exercise as medicine including swimming programs for children with autism and their caregivers. Her community engaged program of research uses mixed methodology. She developed a copyrighted iPhone autism Health Care Manager app. She is also a member of the Milwaukee Pediatric Nursing Research Consortium involved in translational research, implementation evaluation, and developing and evaluating staff development curriculums for pediatric hospitals.

Rachel Stanley is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology program at Marquette University. She received her undergraduate degree from Ripon College with a double major in psychology and disability justice. Her research focuses on the experiences of autistic adults and their perspectives on support needs. Rachel's research on autistic adults' college experiences has been used to develop the On Your Marq program, which she also works with as a student coach. She is currently researching autistic social and mental health experiences during COVID-19 and autistic perspectives on treatment needs. She enjoys reading, creative writing, drawing, and knitting.

Dr. Amy Vaughan Van Hecke, Professor, Psychology, is originally from Canton, Mississippi. She received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. After a research internship at the University of Portsmouth, England, Dr. Van Hecke completed her doctoral work in Developmental Psychology with Peter C. Mundy at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Dr. Van Hecke then received a Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the National Institute of Mental Health to complete a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Dr. Van Hecke currently serves as President of the Executive Board of the Autism Society of Southeastern Wisconsin, a member of the steering team of the statewide Community of Practice on Autism and Developmental Disabilities, and a member of the Treatment and Intervention Advisory Committee at the Wisconsin Department of Health, Children’s Services Division. Dr. Van Hecke enjoys reading, traveling, holding an annual crawfish boil, co-leading a Girl Scouts troop, and cooking Southern food for her husband, her daughters, friends, and students in her spare time. Her undergraduate students particularly enjoy her brown-sugar baked bacon.

Dr. Carmel Ruffolo received a Bachelors of Science with honors and Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Northwestern University. Her research interests included bacterial molecular pathogenesis, gram negative outer membrane protein function and immunogenicity, and infectious diseases of the Pasteurellaceae, specifically animal and human dental diseases.

Before joining the Office of Economic Engagement at Marquette University, Dr. Ruffolo dedicated 17 years at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and Southeastern Wisconsin as an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences. At Parkside, she was a passionate advocate for collaboration, becoming the founding director of the Center for Health Studies and First Year Experience program, and helped to create the Applied Health program. Dr. Ruffolo also developed Celebrazione Italiana, a fundraising event to support the Italian Exchange program, and established the exchange agreement with the University of Western Sydney in Australia. She later moved to Marquette University as the Associate Vice President for Research and Innovation before stepping into her current role of Associate Vice President for Corporate Engagement.

As the Associate Vice President for Corporate Engagement, Dr. Ruffolo provides critical leadership with the university’s engagement with corporations and external stakeholders. She also oversees the institution’s corporate sponsored research and technology transfer activities that aim to advance the university’s mission. In order to create mutually beneficial relationships with Marquette’s corporate partners, Dr. Ruffolo works to create cross-functional teams that can leverage and align our assets and resources with the needs and resources of corporations.

MaryNell Ryan, Sp '79, is the Professional Development Manager at the Next Door Foundation where she and her team design and deliver training, learning and leader development for the teachers and staff at this 50 year-old agency that provides top quality Early Childhood Education and family support.

MaryNell has spent her career in learning and organizational development in both for profit and non-profit organizations in the Milwaukee area. She is a graduate of Marquette and earned her Masters degree at UWM. MaryNell comes from a long line of Marquette connections – including her grandfather who was the head basketball and football coach at MU and his photo still hangs in the old gym on 16th & Clybourne. MaryNell is delighted to partner with Marquette and Wendy Butler in crafting a leadership development program to prepare aspiring leaders for the challenges and impact of the Next Door Foundation.

Wendy Ryan, Grad '13, '16, is responsible for designing and leading organizational development and improvement initiatives that cut across all departments, Wendy draws on her broad range of experience to create effective employee engagement strategies. She leads various initiatives related to leadership development, performance management, continuous improvement, change management, program analysis and impact, and contributes to building strategy, goals, tactics and tools for the University and the Human Resources department. Previous to Marquette, Wendy worked at Children’s Wisconsin in the Organizational Development department and Performance Improvement, focusing on child and family experience.

Wendy teaches Organizational Development in the Graduate School of Management at Marquette, is a certified DiSC® Everything Workplace facilitator, a ProSci® change management practitioner, and a member of the Southeastern Wisconsin Association for Talent Development. She is a volunteer trainer/coach for United Way of Greater Milwaukee, speaks at various association events throughout the region and was selected to participate in Marquette University’s Faculty Externship program in July 2020, where she worked with the Next Door Foundation to create an Inspiring Leaders program. Wendy holds a bachelor’s degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, a certificate in Leadership Studies and a MS in Human Resources, both from Marquette University.

Sumathi Thiyagarajan is the Senior Director of Operations for the Office of Economic Engagement (OEE) at Marquette University. In this capacity, she is responsible for translating strategy to operational structures, processes and programs. She is charged with program management of Marquette’s partnership with the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute. Her goal is to build, implement and scale best practices needed for Marquette’s future large-scale strategic partnerships.

Prior to this role, Sumathi served in the Office of the President on the implementation of the 10-year institutional strategic plan, Beyond Boundaries. She created infrastructure to advance the tactical work of the plan. She also served as the President’s liaison on several institutional strategic initiatives such as the Community Engagement Task Force and the President’s Challenge.

Prior to joining Marquette, Sumathi worked across multiple entities within the healthcare sector. Within Milwaukee, she worked at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin managing several enterprise-level projects to drive organizational change. She has held many leadership, strategy and analytics roles at companies such as ZS Associates (global healthcare consulting firm), EMD Serono (biopharmaceutical company), the American Medical Association (largest national non-profit physician membership organization) and the University of Chicago Medical Center (urban academic medical center). Across these various roles she helped develop strategies, define goals, measure KPIs and implement plans.

Sumathi completed her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Benedictine University (Illinois) and a master’s degree in Management and Information Systems from the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is currently pursuing her MBA at Marquette University. She is also a certified Project Management Professional.

Janice Welburn has been dean of Marquette University libraries since 2006. A leading achievement of her 13-year tenure has been the Digital Scholarship Lab, a facility established in 2015 as the centerpiece of a growing suite of library services aimed at fostering digital scholarship. From 2003 to 2006, she served as associate dean of libraries at the University of Arizona.

At the University of Iowa libraries from 1990 to 2003, Welburn served in many leadership positions, including director roles for public services, facilities, human resources, and technical services. She also served on the planning committee that created the first information commons in a university library and acted as coordinator of personnel and diversity programs. >Earlier, Welburn held librarian positions at New York University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Indiana University (where she was interim head of the Medical Sciences Library), and Princeton University, where she was head of the Psychology Library. She also served as a librarian for the Indianapolis–Marian County Public Library and at Bishop College in Dallas, where she began her professional career.

Welburn has published extensively and made numerous presentations in the areas of diversity, leadership, and human resources. Her extensive academic and professional engagement currently includes serving as an American Library Association endowment trustee and as a member of the ALA Council, the ALA International Relations Committee, and the Association of College and Research Libraries 2019 Coordinating Committee. In 2011, Welburn was selected by her peers as the ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year, a national award recognizing her contributions to the profession of librarianship. Welburn also was past chair of the Catholic Research Resources Alliance Board, past vice chair and past secretary of the Center for Research Libraries Board, and former editorial board member of the portal: Libraries and the Academy.

Welburn’s teaching contributions include several years leading online courses in fund development and conflict management with the Association for Research Libraries online lyceum. Welburn also is an active community leader. She currently serves as a member of the Friends of the Haggerty Museum of Art board and the School of Information Studies advisory board. In addition, Welburn is current president of the Milwaukee chapter of Links, Incorporated, a national service organization for professional women of color that works to strengthen African-American communities.

Dr. William Welburn is the vice president for inclusive excellence for Marquette University’s Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion. As executive director, Welburn is responsible for leadership in setting a strategic direction on campus diversity and inclusion by working with faculty, administrative, staff and student communities on a range of issues leading toward a more inclusive Marquette. His office’s portfolio includes implementation of the university’s strategic planning theme “A Culture of Inclusion,” and in assisting the university in full implementation of actions recommended by planning and climate assessment.

Welburn joined Marquette after having served as associate dean of the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 2006–09, where he held administrative responsibility for graduate student academic services, including initiatives on diversity, handling student problems and assisting in establishing an electronic thesis and dissertation program. He began his career in 1978 in the library at Indiana University–Bloomington. Since that time, he has held positions in the libraries at Princeton University, William Paterson University and the University of Iowa. He has also taught in library and information science graduate programs at Atlanta University, Rutgers University, University of Iowa and University of Arizona. While at Iowa, he shifted his career trajectory when in 1993 he accepted a position as the Graduate College’s assistant dean and interim chair of the African American Studies Program.

A native of Chester County, Pa., Welburn received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University in 1975, his master’s degree in library science from Atlanta University in 1978, and his doctorate in library and information science from Indiana University in 1991. He remains active in his discipline of library and information science through service and publications. He edited a volume for the Association for College and Research Libraries with Beth McNeil and Janice Welburn titled Advocacy, Outreach, and the Nation’s Academic Libraries: A Call for Action. He continues to write and present papers on diversity, documenting diverse cultures and communities, and the bridge between libraries and African-American studies.

Dr. Kathy Coffey-Guenther currently serves as the Senior Mission & Ignatian Leadership Specialist in University Advancement at Marquette University. Additionally, Kathy serves/has served as adjunct faculty for undergraduates and clinical adjunct faculty for graduate students at Marquette University. Kathy received a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Marquette University and a certificate in spiritual direction from the Aquinas Institute of Theology.  For many years, Kathy has worked with a particular emphasis in Ignatian spirituality as a means for healthy spiritual and emotional living. Kathy has also served as a spiritual director, speaker and consultant to religious congregations, clergy and religious, and parishes focusing on the work of community building, conflict resolution and spiritual growth. Kathy serves as current consultant for diaconate formation in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and served as the past Co-Chair of the Community Advisory Board for Clergy Abuse in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.