Dr. Kristi Probst has an Ed.D. in special education. As a doctoral student at Illinois State University, she was a National Leadership Consortium in Sensory Disabilities Scholar, focusing her studies on deafblindness.  

Kristi holds certifications in Special Education for Deaf & Hard of Hearing, Low Vision & Blindness, Learning Behavior Specialist, Elementary Education, and Early Childhood Education.  Kristi has worked as a teacher for the Deaf, an itinerant teacher for the Visually Impaired, Developmental Therapist, University Supervisor for teacher candidates, Sign Language Interpreter, and teacher for students with Learning Disabilities. 

Kristi has served as a peer reviewer for the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness and Teaching Exceptional Children, as well as a proposal reviewer for AERBVI and CEC international conferences. She actively contributes to the field through her involvement on various committees within a variety of professional organizations, including both AERBVI and CEC.

Her current research interests are: education of learners with deafblindness, deaf/hard of hearing, or have visual impairments; comorbid conditions of individuals who have sensory impairments; educational needs specific to underserved populations of children with sensory impairments; inclusive classroom participation of children with both moderate to intense educational needs and deafblindness, hearing impairment, or visual impairments; and teacher training programs in special education and deafblindness, deaf education, and low vision and blindness. 

Dr. Probst will respectfully recuse herself from any work or discussions related to deafblindness in order to avoid any potential conflicts of interest. For questions or support specific to deafblindness, we recommend reaching out to your state deafblind project. Contact information for each state’s project can be found at: https://www.nationaldb.org/state-deaf-blind-projects/

Dr. Aaron Shield is an Associate Professor of Speech Pathology and Audiology at Miami University of Ohio, where he directs the Sign Language and Autism at Miami (SL@M) Lab. He holds a doctorate in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin and completed postdoctoral training in Psychology at the University of Chicago and Boston University.

He has been investigating the linguistic and cognitive development of deaf children on the autism spectrum since 2007 and has published over 20 scientific research papers on the topic. He serves as Associate Editor of the journal Autism and Developmental Language Impairments and is an organizer of the conference Meeting on Language and Autism (MoLA). His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Autism Science Foundation, Autism Speaks, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), and the National Science Foundation.

A late learner of ASL, Dr. Shield has studied 12 languages and considers language to be a fundamental human right. As such, he is dedicated to the proposition that all deaf children be given full access to visual language in order to prevent language deprivation.

Dr. Christy Borders is a professor in special education-deaf/hard of hearing at Illinois State University and a leader in addressing the needs of students who are deaf/hard of hearing (D/HH) with additional disabilities, particularly autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

She has spent considerable time identifying gaps in literature and potential interventions for use with this population of students. Christy’s research stems from personal classroom and clinical experiences that involved this particular population.

She has extensive academic and clinical experience and training in serving students who D/HH and those with ASD. Her undergraduate and graduate degrees both focused on education of D/HH students. In addition, Christy has over 30 years of clinical, classroom, and administrative experience working with individuals with disabilities. She furthered her academic and research skills and experiences through doctoral studies in the area of special education in order to attain additional strategies for D/HH students who have comorbid disabilities.

Dr. Borders’ research has focused on the interventions teachers of the deaf utilize with this population and differences in educational services with the presence of an additional disability. She has been sought out for input on this topic for webinars, newsletters, invited journal articles, and collaborative research.