Timothy Tansey and Fong Chan, two researchers from the UW-Madison’s School of Education, are working with agencies across Wisconsin and the nation to help improve the effectiveness of vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies.
With an annual budget of around $2.5 billion, the VR program is able to help more than one million disabled people a year with their goals of independent living and employment, according to a university release.
Tansey and Chan, who are faculty members of the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education, will work alongside Southern University on a five-year, $12.5 million federal grant to improve the VR program.
The grant will fund two projects, which both began Oct. 1. The first project is titled “Vocational Rehabilitation Technical Assistance Center for Targeted Communities: Educate, Empower, and Employ (Project E3)” and is focused on helping people with disabilities living in impoverished communities gain employment.
Tansey and Chan will play a key part on the second project, called the “Technical Assistance Center for Vocational Rehabilitation Agency Program Evaluation and Quality Assurance.” The project is funded by $2.5 million of the total $12.5 million grant and will evaluate the effectiveness of the new initiatives. Tansey and Chan will work alongside Michigan State faculty members, the Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation and colleagues from UW-Stout.
Other UW-Madison faculty members from the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education and the Department of Counseling Psychology will contribute to the projects.
The primary goal of the grant is to improve the lives of people living within marginalized communities, but it also has immediate benefits to UW-Madison students.
"The capacity to provide students with these research opportunities is invaluable in helping us attract high-quality doctoral applicants," Tansey said in the release. "Such efforts also are integral in assisting the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education retain its ranking as ... the nation's No. 1 Rehabilitation Psychology program. Collaborative efforts like this will continue to keep the Rehabilitation Psychology program, the department and the School of Education at the forefront of research and practice.”
