Martha Mock

Biography

Martha Mock joined the Warner School in 2005 to coordinate and teach in the teacher preparation program. She teaches courses in the areas of early childhood, young children with disabilities, adolescent transition, and inclusion. Mock also serves as director of the Center for Disability and Education, which conducts work in the area of adolescents with disabilities and transition. Under her leadership the Center has secured grants and gifts totaling over $11 million dollars, focusing on teen and adult age individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities from federal, state, and private foundation funders. Some funders include the U.S. Department of Education, NYS Developmental Disabilities Planning Council, and the Golisano Foundation.

Mock has worked with and been an advocate for people with disabilities and their families for over 25 years in educational and community-based settings. She taught in the Virginia Public Schools in a variety of special education classrooms and home-based settings, and worked in the area of teacher preparation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While completing her PhD at the UW-Madison, she was a program evaluator at the Waisman Center, the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. She conducted evaluation and community-based activities for two projects: the federally-funded project Wisconsin Healthy and Ready to Work (www.hrtw.org), focusing on youth with disabilities in transition, and a Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction grant, focusing on parent education and training for parents of children and youth with disabilities.

While at Warner, Mock was also the director of professional development for the federally-funded Early Reading First Project (along with principal investigator Lucia French), using the ScienceStart! Curriculum (www.sciencestart.com). ScienceStart! is a science-based preschool curriculum designed to foster language development, literacy, learning, and cognition.

Mock’s areas of expertise include the following: early intervention, parent-professional relationships, systems of service delivery, systems change, individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, transition, employment, inclusive higher education, person-centered planning, and systems change. She currently serves as a leader of the New York State Inclusive Higher Education Coalition.