This will be the first full year that The University of Mississippi School of Education’s new doctoral program is up and running.
The program will focus on education and special education with an emphasis on the neuroscience behind the way people learn. Specifically, it will concentrate on people who have suffered head injuries such as strokes and concussions and how those people can be rehabilitated to help rebuild their neural pathways.
Two of the major groups affected by brain trauma are children and athletes, both of which require extensive rehabilitation beyond the physical therapy level. The only other universities with equivalent programs are Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Roy Thurston, the creator and primary administrator of the new program, received his Ph.D at the University of Calgary, Alberta. It was in Calgary that he began to specialize in traumatic brain injury and its effect on learning, working with an educational facility in conjunction with a major hospital to help improve mental function in children with brain trauma. This experience motivated him to form a similar program at the university level.
“In years past, where you were two years after a stroke, mentally, was just where you were going to be,” Thurston said. “However, we’ve learned a lot about brain plasticity. The brain can keep learning and keep forming connections even after that two-year period.”
When the brain is damaged, often in falls, car accidents or sports injuries, part of the frontal lobe is damaged. Hospital doctors are focusing on stabilizing their patients and ensuring the brain is in a suitable condition to allow independent function.
What patients and educators find to be ignored often, however, are the effects of brain trauma on the cognitive mind. It has been observed that after a head injury, people frequently suffer from personality changes, increased anger and aggression, memory loss, headaches and sensitivity to light. Professional football players have reported that the lights and noise of a stadium can trigger immediate headaches that are detrimental to their athletic performance.
The new doctoral program has two goals in mind. The first is to allow doctoral students to research and observe the effects of head trauma on learning and cognitive function. The second is to establish a place where those experiencing the negative effects of trauma can come to learn on a more specialized level, which will help them return to their former level of mental function.
Thurston’s intends to replicate the near-miraculous results he has seen in other educational facilities.
“We’ve had college professors with traumatic injuries come in on a seventh- or eighth-grade level of function. After six months, they would be up to 12th grade, and after a year, they could be caught up and ready to start teaching again.”
He also feels that this would benefit the university’s athletes. Sometimes the aftermath of even minor head trauma can be bewildering, and he hopes that student athletes will know that they are not alone and have a major resource to help them.
“They’re working on making new football helmets for these players, but even so, your brain can move around inside your skull, and you can’t protect against that,” Thurston said.
Special Education Program Coordinator Denise Soares said she is very excited to get the word out about the new program
“We’re hoping to get as many people interested in the program as possible, even from other schools within the university,” she said.
According to Thurston and Soares, no other university in the United States currently has a functioning education Ph.D program that incorporates neuroscience, and they believe it will be both a feather in the university’s cap as well as a valuable resource for students and members of the community who have suffered long-term effects of brain injury.
The program already has doctoral students enrolled and conducting research. One student is focusing on the effects of stress on learning and memory, while another is investigating how poverty and its accompanying malnutrition can hinder students from learning effectively.
For more information on the program, students can contact Thurston or Soares, who are both located in Guyton Hall, or Danny Blanton, director of public relations in University Communications.
