MSU Excellence in Community Engagement Awards highlight winning projects

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State is honoring eight outreach projects with the university’s sixth annual Excellence in Community Engagement Awards. Hailey Spinks, a faculty member in the College of Education, is among the honorees.

Winners, awarded in four categories for 2023, include community-engaged research, service, and teaching and learning, and scholarship of engagement.

Winning projects receive $3,000, and honorable mention projects receive $750 to further their engagement projects. The recipients were selected by MSU’s Center for Community-Engaged Learning, Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President, Office of Research and Economic Development and Division of Student Affairs.

Community-Engaged Service

Winner—Lending Expert Assistance to Partnership Schools Behavior Program, submitted by Assistant Clinical Professor Hailey Spinks, Department of Counseling, Higher Education Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations. The LEAPS program provides free behavioral supports for public school students with developmental disabilities engaging in dangerous or disruptive behavior. Included is teacher training to safely manage challenging behavior, comprehensive behavioral assessments, individualized intervention plans and one-to-one staffing while participant interventions are implemented and evaluated. With more intensive supports, students can remain at their local schools without alternative placement, and teachers can develop tools to better address behavioral concerns. Grant funding is from the Mississippi Council on Developmental Disabilities, and practicum students in MSU’s Applied Behavior Analysis master’s program receive training. Through affiliation with the Mississippi Institute on Disabilities at MSU, the project also benefits from the MSU T. K. Martin Center for behavioral workshops and wraparound therapeutic supports.