Announcing DEC's New Executive Board Members
Division for Early Childhood welcomes Megan Purcell, the new Vice President, and Justin Lane, the new Member-at-Large! Dr. Purcell and Dr. Lane will begin their terms July 2020.
About the New Executive Board Members
Megan Purcell – Vice President
Dr. Megan Purcell, Clinical Assistant Professor in the department of Human Development and Family Studies at Purdue University, coordinates, teaches, and conducts field supervision for the Early Childhood Education and Exceptional Needs program. She prepares educators to work with children with and without disabilities ages birth through 3rd grade.
Personally and professionally, Dr. Purcell plans to continue what she is currently doing until she can do it no more. That is, to work with and prepare current and future early childhood educators and early interventionists to provide highly effective services for ALL children and families to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Justin Lane – Member-At-Large
Dr. Justin D. Lane is an Associate Professor of Special Education in the Department of Early Childhood, Special Education, and Rehabilitation Counseling at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Lane’s research focuses on designing and evaluating individualized interventions for young children with high-intensity needs. His specific areas of research include: (a) naturalistic language interventions conducted in typical settings with young children who are minimally verbal, (b) promoting early social behaviors during small group instruction, (c) coaching indigenous implementers to conduct naturalistic procedures with fidelity during typical activities, and (c) systematically training pre-service professionals to visually analyze single case data.
About the Executive Board
The DEC Executive Board focuses their time and effort on ensuring accountability of the organization to fulfill its organizational purposes. The DEC Executive Board utilizes a structure of Policy Governance.
The DEC Executive Board has three primary jobs:
Ownership Linkage
Connecting with owners (DEC members and community stakeholders) to learn their values about what outcomes they desire for the organization and what means of reaching these outcomes would be unacceptable to them.
Policy Development
Translating into policy what the owners tell the Board they want as DEC outcomes, assigning responsibility for meeting the DEC outcomes and setting the ethical and practical limitations necessary to protect the organization.
Assurance of Organizational
Performance Monitoring the Executive Office and board behavior to ensure that DEC demonstrates reasonable progress toward desired DEC’s outcomes and reasonable compliance with the policies guiding the means to reach the outcomes.
