Education Update Honors Distinguished Leaders in Special Education 2009
Merryl H. Tisch, Ed.D.
NYS Board of Regents
Merryl H. Tisch was appointed to the New York State Board of Regents on April 1, 1996 and reelected to five-year terms on April 1, 2001 and April 1, 2006. She was elected Vice Chancellor by her colleagues effective April 1, 2007. Vice Chancellor Tisch brings to her appointment many years of experience in the fields of education, community service, and philanthropy.
Vice Chancellor Tisch is chairperson of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. With an annual budget of $100 million, Met Council has gained national recognition for its work in the areas of youth and family services, housing, poverty programs, and neighborhood preservation. Previously, she served as chairperson of the Mt. Sinai Children’s Center Foundation.
Vice Chancellor Tisch serves on the executive committees of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Citizens Budget Commission. Additionally, she serves on the board of The Trust for Cultural Resources of the City of New York and the Graduate School of Education’s Board of Overseers at the University of Pennsylvania.
From 1977 to 1984, Vice Chancellor Tisch taught first-graders at New York City’s Ramaz School and the B’nai Jeshurun School. She received a BA from Barnard College, an MA in Education from New York University, and an Ed.D. from Teacher’s College, Columbia University.
President Lynda Katz
Landmark College
Dr. Lynda Katz, Ph.D. assumed the presidency of Landmark College on July 1, 1994. Prior to coming to Landmark College Dr. Katz held dual appointments at the University of Pittsburgh as Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Education in the School of Medicine, and Associate Professor of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. She was also an Adjunct Professor at the University of West Virginia in Counseling Psychology. Dr. Katz obtained her Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Counseling/Psychology, as well as a M.Ed. in special education and rehabilitation counseling, and a M.S.W. in psychiatric social work, all from the University of Pittsburgh. Her undergraduate work was in Music Education at Carlow college, also in Pittsburgh, PA. She is a licensed psychologist in Pennsylvania, Vermont and New Hampshire. Dr. Katz’s postdoctoral work in neuropsychology was directed by Gerald Goldstein, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and Research Director of Neuropsychology, Veterans Administration Medical Center in Pittsburgh. Dr. Katz is a Board Certified Fellow in the International College of Prescribing Psychologists and a Board Certified Medical Psychotherapist and Psychodiagnostician. She is also a fellow in the International Academy of Research on Learning Disabilities and a Fellow in the National Academy of Neuropsychology. Dr. Katz has authored and co-authored scores of reference articles, book chapters and other publications in the areas of psychiatric rehabilitation, mental retardation, rights of the developmentally disabled, vocational assessment, achievement testing, learning disabilities, and attention deficit hyperactivity. She has also presented her research findings at seminars internationally.
Dr. Katz has been project director or co-director on 19 major research projects in rehabilitation, learning disabilities, and other diverse topics. Her recent research activities involve attention deficit disorder and specific learning disabilities in adults. She and her co-authors have recently written a book entitled Learning Disabilities in Older Adolescents and Adults: Clinical Utility of the Neuropsychological Perspective, which was published in August 2001.
Jeffrey M. Halperin, Ph.D.
Queens College
Jeffrey M. Halperin, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), and is a full-time member of the Neuropsychology Doctoral faculty. In addition, he is a Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a licensed psychologist in the State of New York. Dr. Halperin received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the CUNY Graduate Center in 1979, and completed a Post-doctoral Fellowship in Psychopharmacology at Schering - Plough Pharmaceutical Corporation in 1980.
For more than two decades Dr. Halperin has been conducting research examining diagnostic and treatment issues, as well as neural functioning, in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other disruptive behavior disorders. Through the use of clinical, neuropsychological and neurobiological measures, he has examined the ways in which neural substrates might differ in subgroups of children with ADHD who do and do not present with comorbid aggressive behavior and/or learning disabilities. In addition, he has been conducting two large longitudinal studies which follow individuals prospectively over time to examine predictors of course and outcome among children with ADHD; one of these studies is focused on the transition from preschool to the school-age years and the other on the transition from childhood to adulthood. Within this latter study he has been employing neuroimaging procedures to examine differences in brain function between those whose ADHD symptoms do and do not persist into adulthood. Most recently, he has been working on the development of novel non-medication interventions for preschoolers at risk for ADHD with the hope of preventing or diminishing the severity of later behavioral and cognitive difficulties.
