Belva C Collins

Belva C. Collins, Ed.D., served as a professor and chair in the Department of Special Education and Child Development at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and in the Department of Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education at the University of Kentucky. She now holds the title of Professor Emeritus at both institutions. Dr. Collins began her career as a teacher of students with intellectual disability in rural Southwestern Virginia before coming to the University of Kentucky to work as a research assistant on several federally funded grants to validate the use of response prompting strategies in special education. She continued this line of research throughout her career in higher education and was successful in guiding the applied research of her students in investigating variations of systematic instruction in classroom and community settings. This work provides the foundation for this text. In addition to disseminating her own scholarly writing, Dr. Collins served as the executive editor of Rural Special Education Quarterly, the primary publication of the American Council on Rural Special Education (ACRES). Recent awards include the ACRES Eagle Award for service to rural special education, the North Carolina Teacher Educator Award, and the TED-Pearson Award for excellence in teacher education. She now devotes her time to writing and presenting on the topics of systematic instruction and special education teacher leadership.