Rebecca Hacker

Dr. Rebecca Hacker is a postdoctoral researcher at Juniper Gardens Children’s Project. She earned her Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation evaluated the effectiveness of a training and coaching intervention with typically developing children to implement a strategy to increase the social communication of their sibling who has a disability and uses augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). As a doctoral student, she collaborated in research to support families who have young children with disabilities who exhibit challenging behaviors and have language delays. This included projects around training and coaching Spanish speaking mothers of young children, as well the interface development and implementation of a mobile software application designed for use by parents with children with disabilities and challenging behaviors. She also collaborated to investigate how various stakeholder (e.g., parents, teachers, speech-language pathologists) perceptions and experiences influence the intervention decisions for students with complex communication needs.

Prior to her doctoral studies, Rebecca worked as a special education teacher in Chicago Public Schools at the preschool, middle, and high school levels. She earned her master’s degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in special education focusing on severe disabilities. This training and experience directly influence her research to increase the access and communication of individuals who have disabilities and use AAC.