May 19, 2005
EEU to celebrate ‘heroes’ of special education in May 21 annual fund-raiser
The mission of the UW’s Experimental Education Unit is threefold: training, research and service. But starting at 5 p.m. Saturday, May 21, the school will add an important fourth element: celebration.
That’s when the EEU will hold its fourth annual fund-raising auction to help it meet the costs of operation for the coming year. And this year, the auction’s main theme is one of thanks and appreciation for nine of the many individuals who have given their time and talent to the cause of special education.
“Celebrating Heroes — Helping Educators Reach Out to Every Student” is the auction’s title, with donated money going to the EEU Endowment for Children with Disabilities.
The impressive list of auction items includes Dale Chihuly glass art works, a week’s stay in a house in Cabo San Lucas, a travel package to Los Angeles that includes tickets to “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and much more.
Established in 1960, the Experimental Education Unit is a small school on the UW campus for children ranging in age from birth through age 7. By tradition, the school blends typically developing children in class along with those with developmental delays such as Down Syndrome, motor delays, autism and other special needs.
The school’s current enrollment of 210 includes 45 students with autism — a number that has doubled in the last decade.
Last year, about 600 people attended and about $500,000 in donations was raised all in one evening — but organizers are hoping this year is even more successful. In all, the EEU’s auctions have raised more than $1 million. The goal for the endowment is $5 million. Hosting this year’s auction evening will be Karen Moyer, wife of Seattle Mariner pitcher Jamie Moyer.
“Celebrating Heroes” will spotlight the efforts and commitment of nine people:
- Felix Billingsley, professor and chair of the College of Education’s Area of Special Education, also is an associate director of the EEU.
- Norris Haring, founding director of the EEU and a leading researcher for decades of special education.
- Joseph Jenkins, professor of special education.
- Cecile Lindquist, former admissions and community agency relations coordinator for the EEU who also is a leader in legislative advocacy for children with disabilities.
- Tom Lovitt, professor emeritus, special education.
- Rick Neel, director of the EEU.
- Patricia Logan Oelwein, a consultant in private practice who has worked at the UW and in Down Syndrome programs at the EEU.
- Stephen Sulzbacher, emeritus associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics and a consulting psychologist at the EEU.
- Owen White, professor of special education.
In a statement she wrote as an introduction for the evening, EEU Principal Jennifer Annable lauds the nine “heroes” as people who “paved the way for all students to receive a free and appropriate education. They helped write the laws and train teachers to work with students of all abilities.” The practices they helped develop, she said, are used in textbooks and classrooms worldwide.
The honorees, too, are clearly proud of the EEU. Billingsley, associate director, cited the school’s tradition of blending together children with and without disabilities and the school’s “cutting-edge research” as among its finest attributes. Repeating the school’s three-part mission — training, research and service — Billingsley said, “The interaction of those three, I think, makes it a very lively and very valuable place that makes many contributions to the field of disabilities.”
For her part, Annable, who has worked at the school for 20 years, said, “One of the best things about the EEU is we’ve created an environment where people want to be — people come here to learn, they have their kids here and people want to come to work here.”
She added, “You walk through the door and you can just feel it. People say, ‘I want to be a part of this.’”
To learn more: For more information about the UW’s Experimental Education Unit, visit online at www.depts.washington.edu/eeuweb.
To donate: Private, tax-deductible donations for The EEU Endowment for Children with Disabilities can be sent to the Experimental Education Unit, University of Washington, Box 357925, Seattle, WA 98195-7925, in care of Principal Jennifer Annable.
