The College of Education and Human Development has several staff, faculty, and units who specialize in providing resources around socio-emotional support for K-12 students and educators. This includes (but is not limited to) curriculum development, coaching, professional development, grant partnership opportunities, and program evaluations. Beyond this, the college also offers Master’s degree programs Counseling Psychology and Positive Coaching and Athletic Leadership, both of which emphasize best practices for providing socio-emotional support. Our list of experts, their areas of emphasis, and how they can help schools can be found below.

Expert Consultants

• Prosocial Education 
• Positive School Climate 
• Kinder Schools 

Dr. Bergin has deep expertise in youth prosocial development from birth to adulthood. Bergin is the author of Designing a Prosocial Classroom (for educators) and a textbook featuring social-emotional development. She developed both PAL Classrooms and Prosocial ECHO.  She is director of the Prosocial Development and Education Lab. 

Offerings: Coaching, Professional Development, Curriculum Development, Consulting, Grant Partnerships 

• Youth Library Services 
• Adolescent Literature 
• Sociocultural Theory 

Dr. Brendler’s focus areas include youth library services, adolescent literature, and sociocultural theory 

Offerings: Providing Coaching, Consultations, and Professional Development 

• Emotional development 
• Identity development 
• Resilience  

Dr. Booker studies the development of emotions, personality, and identity development for older children and adolescents. His work often utilizes family interactions and the importance of life stories. His work also centers on aspects of strength and resilience in development—the ways emotional skills, personality differences, and an understanding of “who I am” help promote daily life and functioning. He is the director of the Positive Youth Development Lab at the University of Missouri. 

Offerings: Professional Development, Feedback on Extracurricular Initiatives, Consulting, Grant Partnership

Email: fosterjen@emints.org 

Outreach Unit for the University of Missouri – College of Education and Human Development 

• Instructional design support 
• Technology integration 
• Collaborative learning 

eMINTS’s primary focus area is in providing high-quality professional development to k-12 educators as they work to transform their educational practices while integrating technology. One of our primary focuses has been on supporting educators in transferring prosocial education, a subset of SEL, into all aspects of the k-12 educational experience as a way to develop a schoolwide collaborative learning culture. Additionally, we have been examining effective strategies for implementing design thinking and STEM in the middle school setting, as well as game design in the elementary classroom. Throughout all of our studies we have placed a focus on supporting rural, high needs and underrepresented populations though high-quality professional development. 

Offerings: Professional Development, Coaching & Mentoring, Instructional Design Support, Adult Facilitation, Online Course Facilitation, Project Management, Grant Implementation and Management Support 

• Parent-adolescent and sibling relationship dynamics 
• Culture 
• Latino adolescent and young adult adjustment 

Dr. Killoren’s areas of expertise include family relationships, culture, and Latino adolescent and young adult adjustment; contributions of parents and siblings to adolescents’ sexual health and positive development; parent-adolescent and sibling relationship dynamics.

• Positive Behavior Supports 
• Reducing Discipline Referrals & Suspensions 
• Multi-tiered Systems of Support 

Dr. Lewis has been involved with developing school-wide systems of behavioral support for over 25 years.  He has worked directly with school teams around the world, secured over $80 million in grants to support his research and demonstration efforts, and is a frequent contributor to the professional literature examining various aspects of Positive Behavior Support. Dr. Lewis directs the University of Missouri Center for School-wide Positive Behavior Support, is Co-Director of the national OSEP Center for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports and former Co-Director of the Center for Adolescent Research in Schools. His specialty areas include social skill instruction, functional assessment, and proactive school-wide discipline systems. 

Offerings: 30 years of working with federal/national, state, district, and school leadership teams around the world in building Multi-tiered Systems of Support to address the social/emotional/behavioral wellbeing of at risk children and youth 

nee@missouri.edu 

Outreach Unit for the University of Missouri – College of Education and Human Development 

• SEL Evaluation Tools 
• Teacher Effectiveness 
• Leader Effectiveness 

NEE is designed to promote professional growth and development through accurate measurement of teacher and leader effectiveness combined with frequent, focused feedback conversations to foster growth. 

Offerings: The Network for Educator Effectiveness provides comprehensive evaluation resources and services to assist schools in evaluation of their SEL efforts. To assist schools with their SEL evaluation processes, NEE has published Evaluating Teacher & Principal Effectiveness on Indicators of Social-Emotional Learning, which can be downloaded at: https://neeadvantage.com/sel/ 

Associate Professor, Director of the Mizzou Ed Bully Prevention Lab, Director of Graduate Studies – Department of Special Education 

• Bully Prevention 
• Bullying Intervention 
• Bullying Assessment and Evaluation  

Chad Rose has been studying bully prevention for over 15 years. His specific research focus is on factors that place students at risk for escalated bullying involvement, reducing bullying among vulnerable populations of youth, and tiered interventions for reducing bullying and increasing social and communication skills in both physical and electronic environments. Additionally, Rose and his team evaluate bully prevention policy, reporting and investigation procedures, and establishing a multi-tiered; team-based approach to bully prevention.  

Bully Prevention Training and Professional Development, Consultation, Bully Prevention Policy Evaluation, Intervention Development and Implementation, School-Wide Assessment and Evaluation of Bullying and Related Factors, Grant Partnerships 

Website: https://www.mizzoubullypreventionlab.com 

• Academic Belonging (Higher Education and K-12 Education) 
• Educational Equity and Inclusion for Marginalized Youth 
• Mental Health Services Advocacy in K-12 Schools 

Dr. Slaten’s areas of expertise include academic belonging (higher education and k-12 education), educational equity and inclusion for marginalized youth, mental health services advocacy in k-12 schools, and school counseling training 

Offerings: Professional Development, Training, And Consulting 

• School Libraries 
• School Librarians 
• Literacy and Technology 

Kerry’s Areas of Expertise Include School Libraries, School Librarians, Literacy and Technology, Educational Leadership, and Library Management