ORONO – The first graduates of a federally funded master’s degree program at the University of Maine are bringing new ideas and leadership capacity to agencies serving young children with disabilities and their families.

The U.S. Department of Education grant, Training Options for Early Intervention Personnel, funds graduate study for practicing professionals and is a collaboration of the UMaine Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies and the College of Education and Human Development. More than 100 students have enrolled in courses, and 50 have been accepted into the graduate school at UMaine.

Recent graduates are Holly Day of North Yarmouth, Cyndi Dyer-Hutchison of Benton and Sandy Flacke Wood of Morrill. In addition to coursework, the educators researched and completed projects to benefit their professional fields.

Day is team leader of service coordinators – case managers – at Child Development Services in Lewiston. Her project involved forming a partnership with a regional hospital to refer babies in its neonatal intensive care unit to Child Development Services before discharge in order to begin early monitoring.

Dyer-Hutchison teaches in the inclusive preschool classroom for 3- to 5-year-old children at Child Development Services in Waterville. She created an informational video for parents preparing for the initial services eligibility team meeting and interview.

Flacke Wood, an educational specialist at Mid-Coast Resource Development Center in Belfast, trains and mentors child care providers. Her profession-targeted project piloted a model curriculum for family child care providers.

Lucille Zeph, director of CCI and assistant professor of education, is the project director for TOP. Sandra Doctoroff and L. Sharon Gilbert co-coordinate the project and serve as the primary faculty.

“This project has allowed the University of Maine to begin to address the state’s critical shortage of highly qualified early intervention specialists to meet the need of young children, birth to age 5, with disabilities and their families,” said Zeph. “Graduates are expected to fill leadership positions throughout Maine.”

More information about the TOP grant program is available from the Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies by calling 581-1084 or at www.umaine.edu/cci/learning/top.