The College of Education welcomes new faculty for the 2019-2020 academic year. This year, the Department of Special Education is joined by Lauren Hampton.
Lauren Hampton
What institution were you most previously with and what was your role?
I was with Northwestern University as a post-doctoral student, and then a research associate in the Department for Communication Sciences and Disorders.
What are your research interests or area of specialty?
I am interested in communication disorders (including autism) in childhood and early intervention solutions for optimizing outcomes for individual children.
What sparked those interests?
My first summer job in college was at a daycare center that turned out to actually be an early intervention site for children with autism. I was assigned to work with a young child who was minimally verbal and by the end of the summer I was in love and determined to spend my career finding how to best help kids like him learn how to communicate.
What are you excited about for your new position at UT?
I’m looking forward to working with my many colleagues across the university who also study treatments for children with autism or language disorders.
What do you hope to contribute to the College of Education or the Austin community?
I hope to help identify better adaptive intervention approaches to optimize outcomes for young children with language delays or disorders through my research, through mentoring young students who will go out to be early interventionists, and through training practitioners in the Austin community to assess and implement evidence-based practices.
