Stout Vocational Rehabilitation Institute
Spring Newsletter
Volume 15 ● Issue 2
UW-Stout
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
A Note from the Executive
Director…………………1
RRTC-EVBVR…………….………...2
Spotlight on our
Alumni….……………...3
SVRI Updates………………...….4
More Alumni
Fun………..…………….5
Student Poster Presentations……………………..6
Spring 2013
A Note from the Executive Director
John Lui Ph.D., MBA, CRC, PVE
the Rehabilitation and
Training CenterEvidence Based Practice
in Vocational Evaluation.
You will find information
that will allow you to
connect with their weblooking forward to her
site and newsletter, so
contributions to SVRI.
you can stay up-to-date
While there is much
on their progress.
more going on here at
Research will begin in
SVRI, I hope you enjoy
July on Successful Stratereading about our Alumni
gies for Engaging Stuand you can look forward
In this issue you will find dents with Disabilities:
to the Summer newsletter
articles on three Alumni Teaching Soft Skills for
to bring information and
Employment after a team
from our Master’s proupdates on more that is
gram in Vocational Re- received the Collaboragoing on this busy
tive Thematic Cohort Rehabilitation. JoLynn
spring!
search Grant. Looking
Blaeser, graduated in
forward to hearing about John Lui
1977; Spencer Mosley,
graduated 1972; and Da- their progress.
na Beining, graduated
June begins training for
2006. I hope you enjoy partners in the Wisconreading the articles they sin IPS project in Motisubmitted. May their sto- vational Interviewing;
ries also inspire new
more information on that
graduates to pursue their can be found inside.
goals.
I am pleased to have addAlso in this issue, you
ed a new staff member,
can read a general update Jaclyn Jerrick, a MSVR
on activities that have
graduate of the UW-Stout
been taking place with
program. I am
Hello to everyone from
SVRI! Spring has finally
arrived! Here at UWStout, with spring time
comes graduation. We
decided this was a great
time of year to use the
newsletter to turn the
spotlight on a few graduates of our own that have
ventured out in the field
and are doing wonderful
things!!
Rehabilitation Research & Training Center: Evidence Based Practice in Vocational
Rehabilitation - SVRI Update
Rehabilitation Research & Training
Center: Evidence Based Practice in
Vocational Rehabilitation (RRTCEBP-VR) and its team members
have been hard at work and continue to gain knowledge and share
their findings, enhancing the lives
of individuals with disabilities.
Current initiatives focus on identifying practices that improve employment rates and quality of employment for people with disabilities who will receive Vocational
Rehabilitation Services. Here is an
update of what has been happening
with RRTC-EBP-VR!!!
The Phase I research has been completed and multiple articles have
been published in the Fall 2012
special issue of the Rehabilitation
Counseling Bulletin. Plain language summaries of select studies
continue to be developed for nonresearch audiences. A list of complete articles, along with plain language summaries, can be found at
http://research2vrpractice.org/.
Mississippi, Maryland). This data
collection has been completed and
analysis and writing is underway.
The Michigan State team is leading
this effort with assigned analysis/writing provided by research
partners from the University of
Texas-El Paso, the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Wisconsin-Stout Vocational Rehabilitation Institute
(SVRI). The final product will be a
monograph covering key findings
across the four states, with individual chapters highlighting specific
features and findings in each of the
state programs.
RRTC-EBP-VR now has electronic
distribution of their quarterly newsletter. If you are interested in learning more about the advances and
would like to be connected, please
subscribe at
http://research2vrpractice.org/enewsletter/. Your feedback on the
newsletter format is welcome and
appreciated. You can learn more
about RRTC-EBP-VR by visiting
their website at
http://research2vrpractice.org/about
us.
Phase III is underway continuing
work on the Individual Classification of Functioning Disability and
Health (ICF) study and the motivation study (in collaboration with the
Minnesota and Wisconsin VR programs). The Return to Work Motivational Interviewing curriculum
will be finalized and a randomizedcontrolled trial will be implementPhase II consisted of data collection ed.
across the four states selected for
case study (Texas, Utah,
Page 2
SPOTLIGHT ON OUR ALUMNI !!
“The education I received while at
Stout provided me with a strong
foundation for the work I’ve done
throughout my career. Since graduating in 1977, I’ve had some great
opportunities to put what I learned
to work in a variety of settings - in
the field of deafness rehabilitation,
in Corrections as a Staff Training
Specialist, and currently as the Staff
Development Director for the public VR program in Minnesota. In
this role, I manage all facets of
learning and development for the
agency, including recruitment, internships, needs assessment, design,
development, delivery, and evaluation of training programs. In the
past several years, I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to reconnect
with my Stout roots by serving on
the graduate program Advisory
Committee, collaborating on internships, and addressing the ongoing
training and development needs of
rehabilitation professionals working in the field. While the field has
grown and changed over the years,
the one constant that I carry with
me is that it is the quality of relationships we build with consumers
and colleagues that makes all the
difference!”
Ms. Blaeser completed a B.S. in
Vocational Rehabilitation from the
University of Wisconsin – Stout in
1977 and holds an M.A. in Human
Resource Development from the
University of St. Thomas.”
lean more brought me to Stout,
where I began online classes for the
Meet Dana Beining
VR Master’s Degree program in
2003. The flexible online courses
allowed me to work part time and
still care for two small children. I
was more than impressed with the
Stout program, and was honored to
call myself a Stout graduate in
2006. Since that time, I have expanded my professional services to
include forensic vocational assessment for earning capacity, development of retraining plans, and expert
testimony. Of course, I continue to
work with placement files, as I en“In 2001, I found the field of prijoy the relationships developed with
vate rehabilitation and a job as a
clients and the shared sense of
placement specialist. Immediately, achievement when they find sucI loved working with people and
cess. Currently, I am in a business
helping them recognize their worth partnership, Vocational Consulting
in the labor market. My desire to
Services, LLC. Business ownership
Meet JoLynn
Blaeser
has its own challenges, but I continue to find my work to be very rewarding, and enjoy being my own
boss. In addition, I have been active
with IARP (International Association of Rehabilitation Professionals) at both the local level and
through the parent organization.
My free time is spent with my husband and two wonderful children. I
am a travel junkie, participating in
Stout VR trips to Ireland, Scotland
and Malta. I have a soft spot in my
heart for animals: we have two
dogs, nine chickens, two rabbits
and three horses. I attribute a great
deal of the knowledge, skills and
relationships that I have developed
to my Stout experience, and I hope
that all future graduates are able to
spend every day loving what they
do.”
Page 3
Motivational Interview Training for IPS Learning Collaborative
In our Winter newsletter you
learned of the exciting new partnership between Johnson & Johnson,
the Wisconsin Department of
Health Services, and the Western
Regional Recovery and Wellness
Consortium (WRRWC) to pilot the
Individualized Placement and Support Project (IPS) in Barron, Chippewa, Dunn and Eau Claire counties. Training will begin in June for
all partner agencies in the techniques of Motivational Interviewing(MI).
specialists and case managers to
improve consumer engagement and
follow through in work activities,
as well as promoting positive
change in a range of other behaviors. Although MI is relatively simple and straight-forward, it is not
easy to learn. This training is designed for participants to learn MI
to fidelity standards and has the
following required training components:
hour) for staff to continue learning
MI. The group involves staff presenting an audiotaped practice sample for review on a rotating basis.
●Conference calls with the trainer,
as needed, to support implementation.
●1-day follow-up booster training
in Nov. or Dec. 2013.
The goals of this training are to be
able to identify the basic MI practice elements, gain some initial ex●Pre-training reading and written
exercises (about 2-3 hours). Written perience and skills, increase motiMotivational Interviewing (MI) is a exercises must be completed prior vation to deliver MI as an evidencebased practice and to engage conto the on-site training.
well-established evidence-based
tinued learning. It is exciting to see
practice designed to help people
●2-day intensive on-site training
this project moving along so well!
change their behavior. Within IPS,
MI will be useful for employment ●Formation and implementation of
monthly peer learning groups (1
Research Proposal Accepted
Stout Vocational Rehabilitation
Institute and Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction submitted a research proposal in May,
Successful Strategies for Engaging
Students with Disabilities: Teaching Soft Skills for Employment.
UW-Stout College of Education,
Health and Human Sciences accepted the proposal and awarded
the Collaborative Thematic Cohort
Research Grant. The purpose of
this research is to determine what
secondary educators perceive is
the most effective mode of instruction when teaching 16– to 21-
year-old students with and without
disabilities soft skills for employment. They also hope to possibly
use the data gained through this
research as an independent variable to learn what mode of soft skill
instructions result in positive employment outcomes for students
with disabilities. The outcome of
the project should be a valid developed survey to determine what
the perceived strategies are. The
research project is planned to
begin in early July and carry out
through the summer. The team
consists of Andrew Berlin, Cayte
Anderson, Wendi Dawson,
Priscilla Matthews, Amber Miller,
and David Rosenthal. Congratulations to the team for being awarded this grant!
Page 4
Alumni Fun Continues
Meet Spencer Mosley
Traveling from a warm and sandy
Missouri military post’s Army National Guard training center in December,1971 to Menomonie’s snow
covered campus & single digit temperatures, I met the week before
Christmas with Dr. Walter Pruitt
(then UW-Stout’s Program Director
for Master’s Degrees in Vocational
Rehabilitation) in Eichelberger Hall
– utilized by the program from
1967-1974 to house teaching faculty and staff as well as being used as
classrooms most of our program’s
graduate classes. Pruitt’s explanation of the rapidly growing program
– and the recently added Specialty
called ‘Work Evaluation’, was followed by introductions to program
support staff and several other management staff and faculty: gentlemen named Paul Hoffman, Henry
Redkey, Arnold Sax, Donn Brolin,
Dennis Dunn and Anthony Langton. Later, after a brisk walk to the
nearby Vocational Evaluation Center (located in the city’s former
“Bauer Garage”), I was to meet
Darrell Coffey and John Wesolek.
How could I have known that in my
first couple of hours becoming acquainted with a program which
would become a cornerstone of
training and research excellence in
this field – and which has maintained that level of distinction and
credibility to this day, I would meet
many of the founders of a Vocational Rehabilitation and Work
Evaluation movement which would
remain a vital part of my career’s
work for the next four decades.
Graduating a year later – having
learned the meaning and importance of new terms such as:
work sample, Plan B and, of course
‘stipend’, I began a thirty-two year
career with the Wisconsin Division
of Vocational Rehabilitation
(DVR). Beginning at the Green
Bay Reformatory (now Correctional Institution) as one of only two
vocational evaluators within WIDVR and working on a joint project
with the WI Department of Corrections, the only work samples I was
able to utilize were within the
‘lockable’ Singer Graflex evaluation system. Their inclusion as a
part of my graduate training experience was a critical factor in landing
that first job. After later working as
a vocational rehabilitation counselor and at several managerial positions at the agency I retired and became involved in a private partnership doing rehabilitation training,
consultation and technical assistance for several years. Oh yes, the
partners – both fellow graduates of
this same Stout Vocational Rehabilitation program! Stints as a nonteaching faculty at UW-Stout and
as a contract employee of the WI
Department of Transportation followed and I currently do part time
contracting as a Vocational Expert
with the Social Security Administration – using, in part, knowledge
about jobs, jobs skills & assessment
that was part of my curriculum in
1972. Still living in Green Bay, my
wife and I enjoy time at our cabin
in northern WI, spend a few weeks
in Sarasota in winter and enjoy other travel along with visiting our
sons in Chicago and New York.
Concurrent with my work I’ve been
an active participant on local community boards as well as nearly forty years involvement in leadership
roles with the National Rehabilitation Association (NRA) and its affiliates at the State & Regional levels – including serving as NRA
President in 1993. Traveling as a
U.S. State Department
“Community Connections” delegate to Ukraine in 2003 as part of a
disability and technical information
exchange and receiving the 1992
SVRI Outstanding Graduate Award
are among my most memorable
moments in a career that all began
at UW-Stout on a cold, snowy December day.
Page 5
Student News
Jessica Richter
The 2013 Wisconsin Rehabilitation
Conference was held April 10-12 in
Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. There are
three students currently in the MSVocational Rehabilitation Program
that were involved in poster presentations at the conference. Amber
Miller and Kathryn Kins presented
Examining the Soft Skills of Veterans Returning to Work, and Jessica
Richter presented PTSD and Military Veterans. Good job students!
Left: Katie Kins
Right: Amber Miller
Staff News
We are pleased to announce that Jaclyn Jerrick is the newest employee here at SVRI.
She was hired to fill the
position as an Associate Rehabilitation
Technologist. She will
be assisting individuals
with sensory and learning disabilities to im-
prove their quality of
life with low tech and
high tech solutions. She
will specifically be
working with individuals who have vision
loss.
Jaclyn graduated in
May 2013, with her
Master's degree from
UW-Stout’s Vocational
Rehabilitation program,
emphasizing in Rehabilitation Counseling
and Vocational Evaluation. Before graduating,
she completed an internship at the Minnesota State Services for
the Blind. Welcome
Jaclyn!