Congratulations to K. Charlie Lakin, PhD, appointed the new director of the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR)!
Dr. Lakin has a long history with NIDRR. As a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration, Dr. Lakin headed the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Community Integration for more than 20 years. He has more than 40 years experience as a teacher, researcher, consultant, and advocate in services for people with disabilities.
We at NARIC have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Lakin several times and are very excited to see him step into this new role. He starts at NIDRR on August 29th.
A quick search of REHABDATA for articles, books, and reports authored by Dr. Lakin: http://tinyurl.com/lakin-results
Congratulations, Charlie! I have plans to pick your brain and also your newly enlarged pockets for a couple of ideas I am working on for strengthening community living and employment for people with developmental disabilities. Next year will be the 40th anniversary of passage of the Massachusetts special ed law (Ch. 766), forerunner of IDEA and I am looking for time to work on that too. I hope if you have a spare minute you will read my book, “My Daughter, My Teacher: Mary Ann, Autistic in English and Spanish,” iUniverse 2010. Again, congratulations on your new, very important position – Martha Ziegler, Woburn, MA
Hi Ms. Ziegler!
Thanks very much for visiting the NARIC spotlight blog!
I don’t know whether Dr. Lakin reads our blog on a regular basis so we will forward your comments to NIDRR.
—Jess Chaiken
Media and Information Services Manager