Scaling Effective School Mental Health Interventions and Practices

Lee Kern, Ph.D. is a Professor of Special Education and Director of the Center for Promoting Research to Practice and Lehigh University Autism Services. She has extensive experience with children and youth with special needs, having worked for more than 35 years in education as a paraprofessional, general and special education teacher, behavior specialist, consultant, and researcher. Dr. Kern has received more than ＄30 million in grant support from IES, NIMH, USDA, and other agencies to conduct research in the area of interventions for children and adolescents. Her research focuses on reducing behavioral and mental health problems using positive behavior support strategies. In 2018, Dr. Kern received the James Kaufman Research Award for excellence in research. She has written numerous articles, book chapters, and four books. Dr. Kern is past co-Editor of Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions and serves on the editorial boards of six journals in the fields of education and disabilities.

Mark D. Weist, Ph.D., received his doctorate in clinical psychology from Virginia Tech in 1991, after completing his internship at Duke University, and is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of South Carolina. In 1995, with colleagues from the University of Maryland, he established the National Center for School Mental Health, now in its 29th year of supporting this field (see www.schoolmentalhealth.org). Dr. Weist is also a partner on the National Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (see www.pbis.org). He has edited or developed 17 books and has published and presented widely in areas of mental health education system partnerships, school mental health (SMH), trauma, violence and youth, evidence-based practice, cognitive behavioral therapy, supporting military families, and advancing policies that support children and youth at local, state, regional, national, and international levels of scale. With colleagues, he currently leads the Southeastern School Behavioral Health Community (see www.schoolbehavioralhealth.org), and is leading or co-leading several federally funded studies on strategies to improve intervention effectiveness, impact, and scaling up. He has led or co-led eight randomized controlled trials with funding from a range of federal agencies and foundations.

Dr. Samuel McQuillin, Ph.D., is on the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on translating theories of child development to practical prevention and intervention strategies, with a particular emphasis on school mental health promotion. He received his doctorate in School Psychology from the University of South Carolina in 2012, and completed his internship at Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District in Texas. He was previously faculty at the University of Houston. His scholarship sits at the intersection of school psychology, community psychology, and clinical psychology. Dr. McQuillin is an international expert on evidence-based youth mentoring and schools. He directs the Youth Empowerment in Schools and Systems (YESS) research lab at the University of South Carolina. His research has been funded by a wide range of state, federal, and foundation funders.