Jones Named Georgia's 2003 Outstanding Career and Technical Educator Karen H. Jones, a professor of occupational studies in UGA’s College of Education, has been named the state’s Outstanding Educator for 2003 by the Georgia Association for Career and Technical Educators (GACTE). Her work and the work of other state winners will be considered for the national honor in 2004.   Jones has spent most of her 17-year career as a UGA faculty member studying teacher education, teacher effectiveness, use and effectiveness of paraprofessionals in vocational settings, and instructional settings for students who have special needs.  Much of her scholarly activities have been interdisciplinary, combining efforts from vocational education and special education. Her research has focused on the preparation of vocational personnel to work with students from special populations who experience physical or mental disabilities, academic or economic disadvantages, or other circumstances such as delinquency, eating disorders and teen parenting which cause them to be at-risk for failing or dropping out of school. Since 1985, Jones has received funding of about $2 million through six federal grants from the U.S. Department of Education to prepare CTE teachers and paraeducators to work with students to help retain them in school, graduate, become employable and gain social competence. Her most recent project resulted in the publication of a handbook titled, A Technological Approach to Pregnancy Prevention Among Youth With Disabilities and a CD-ROM for use by classroom teachers. “We collected national data from teachers to determine what content they thought kids should know about self-esteem and pregnancy prevention and how they thought students from special populations learned best,” said Jones. “Then we developed lesson plans and put them into CD-ROM format.” The pregnancy among youth with disabilities is an untapped piece of information, according to Jones. “Nationally, we have an idea of how many kids with disabilities there are and how many pregnant teens there are, but few have looked at the two in relation to each other,” she said.   Previous grants have funded teachers and paraprofessionals to take courses and workshops to improve their teaching skills when working with students from special populations.The grants have provided  financial support to over 200 people. “We have worked with middle and high school personnel from all over Georgia over the last 17 years.  The most important things we teach them is to recognize the individual worth of each student and show them there are a multitude of ways to reach each student in terms of teaching strategies,” said Jones. “The need to keep kids in school and prepare them for the real world of work has been on-going and will continue to be critical due to high dropout rates and unemployment.” Jones helped write the Georgia Intervention Guide, a handbook for vocational academic coordinators to use with students who are at risk for failing or dropping out of school, for the Georgia Department of Education in 1997. She expects to complete four more handbooks for special needs professionals in career and technical education this year. She has 32 articles published in refereed journals, 14 published in non-refereed journals, and has made 29 national presentations and workshops.   Jones received her Ed.D. in vocational education from UGA, and both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in family and consumer sciences from Georgia College in Milledgeville. She taught family and consumer sciences at Groves High School in Savannah for seven years.   Monday, October 6, 2003 WRITER: Michael Childs, 706/542-5889, mchilds@coe.uga.edu CONTACT: Karen Jones, 706/542-4473,  khjones@uga.edu