Dr. Leah Wood

Leah Wood is an Assistant Professor at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. Dr. Wood earned her Ph.D. from UNC Charlotte in 2014 in Special Education with an emphasis on moderate and severe disabilities. She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and specializes in the application of systematic instruction to teach academic content and skills to students with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder. As a classroom teacher, Dr. Wood taught students with mild to severe intellectual disability for six years. As the lead Graduate Research Assistant for the GoTalk Phonics IES grant, and coauthor of the Early Reading Skills Builder curriculum, Dr. Wood has contributed to research studies across a variety of paradigms (i.e. single case, randomized control, qualitative). At Cal Poly, Dr. Wood has particularly enjoyed teaching about single case design research and evidence-based practices. In her own research, Dr. Wood is examining academic interventions for students with developmental disabilities, both with and without the application of technology. Specifically, she has developed interventions intended to promote comprehension of text across content and formats. 

 

 

Dr. Stephen Crutchfield

Stephen Crutchfield is an Assistant Professor at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. Dr. Crutchfield received his PhD from the University of Kansas in June of 2014, with an emphasis in Autism Spectrum Disorders. After graduating, Dr. Crutchfield spent a year as an Institution of Education Sciences postdoctoral research fellow at the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project in Kansas City, Kansas.

Prior to pursuing graduate degrees at the University of Kansas, Dr. Crutchfield was a classroom teacher in the urban core of Kansas City, Missouri. Dr. Crutchfield’s current research examines how emerging technology can be leveraged to improve social skill and adaptive skill outcomes for young children and youth with autism both in and outside the classroom. Specifically, Dr. Crutchfield is interested in investigating the effects of location dependent coaching and monitoring systems for young children and youth with autism by utilizing available location tracking technology (e.g., GPS, indoor location systems) to provide these individuals with contextualized prompts and coaching sequences, delivered on smartphones in the natural environment.