Development of Early Childhood Course to Meet SHIPP Competencies

The University of Kentucky (UK) plan for developing an early childhood course that embeds competencies from the SHIPP training will involve three major features. First, we intend to use an existing course entitled "Transdisciplinary Services for Children with Multiple Disabilities" as the basis for this course. We believe that this established course has many of the same competencies as the existing course and, if used. will expedite our capacity to offer it to students in a timely manner. Second, the Interdisciplinary Early Childhood Education (IECE) program at UK has recently undergone program revisions that included the abovementioned Transdisciplinary course in its required listings. As such, we have in place an efficient way of ensuring delivery of the course information to our students seeking certification. Finally, we intend to collaborate with Morehead State University to redesign the Transdisciplinary course and to offer it through distance learning technology. We are currently involved in a collaborative arrangement with Morehead and so this is a logical extension of that. In addition, we will explore additional collaborations with interested universities in an effort to expand the capacity of the course by utilizing resources from several universities for its delivery.