Missouri Prevention Science Institute

          Dr. Tracey Keny­on Milarsky com­plet­ed her Ph.D. in Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion — Behav­ior Dis­or­ders at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri — Colum­bia. Pre­vi­ous­ly, she taught in a vari­ety of ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion set­tings, and as a learn­ing spe­cial­ist with a focus on sup­port­ing stu­dents with behav­ioral goals. Dur­ing her doc­tor­al stud­ies, Tracey con­tributed to the Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion­al Sci­ences (IES) devel­op­ment grant-fund­ed project, DIs­abil­i­ty Anti-BuL­ly­ing (DIAL) train­ing aimed at cre­at­ing pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment to enhance ele­men­tary school edu­ca­tors’ knowl­edge and skills for iden­ti­fy­ing, mit­i­gat­ing, and pre­vent­ing bul­ly­ing among stu­dents with and with­out dis­abil­i­ties. She also served as a grad­u­ate research assis­tant with the Boone Coun­ty Ear­ly Child­hood Coali­tion. Her dis­ser­ta­tion research focused on the iden­ti­ty sense­mak­ing process­es of for­mer spe­cial edu­ca­tion stu­dents par­ent­ing chil­dren with sim­i­lar spe­cial edu­ca­tion place­ments.  Tracey is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in ways that schools and fam­i­lies can sup­port pos­i­tive dis­abil­i­ty iden­ti­ty devel­op­ment for stu­dents start­ing in the ear­ly years of devel­op­ment. Cur­rent­ly, she is a post­doc­tor­al fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri and a project man­ag­er for Dr. Melis­sa Stormont’s Kinder­garten Check Up (KCU) project.  

Exper­tise:  

• Qual­i­ta­tive research method­ol­o­gy 

• Iden­ti­ty devel­op­ment and sense­mak­ing process­es, includ­ing dis­abil­i­ty iden­ti­ty 

• Sup­port­ing pro-social behav­ior in ear­ly child­hood through fam­i­ly col­lab­o­ra­tion