Professor of Special Education and Counseling, Director, Rehabilitation Research and Training Center, Virginia Commonwealth University
Speaker Bio
Paul Wehman, Ph.D. is a Virginia Commonwealth University professor in the School of Education’s Counseling and Special Education. He is the Director of the VCU Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment with three NIDILRR funded RRTCs, and also serves as the Director for the VDOE funded Autism Center for Excellence (ACE) and the Center for Transition Innovations (CTI). His background is highly interdisciplinary and he is internationally known for his pioneering work in the beginning of supported employment in 1980, a rehabilitation intervention strategy that has facilitated millions of persons with neurodevelopmental disabilities, brain injury, mental illness, and spinal cord injury in countries all over the world to gain competitive employment for the first time. He has researched, written, instructed, and presented extensively on issues related to the transition from school to adulthood and special education as it relates to young adulthood and employment. His work and research have been published extensively and he is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation. His recent awards include VCU’s School of Medicine Distinguished Scholarship Award in 2018 and first-place American Rehabilitation Counseling Association (ACRA) Research Award in 2015. Dr. Wehman was recognized as one of the 50 most influential special educators of the millennium by a national survey coordinated by the Remedial and Special Education journal in December 2000. On a daily basis, he works with people with disabilities, policymakers, and professionals related to disability and is active in mentoring undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students.