About the Presenters 

Dr. Madan M. Kundu received his masters and doctoral degrees in Rehabilitation Counseling from Michigan State University. He is a Certified Rehabilitation Counselors (CRC), National Certified Counselor (NCC), and Licensed Rehabilitation Counselor (LRC) in the State of Louisiana. His professional career in Rehabilitation spans about four decades. Currently, Dr. Kundu is the Chair and Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Disability Studies at Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA. He is the Project Director of three long-term training projects, one national rehabilitation capacity building project, and one Rehabilitation Research Institute for Underrepresented Populations funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

Dr. Kundu is the recipient of the:

• 1970-71 Fullbright Scholarship

• 1984 American Rehabilitation Counseling Association (ARCA) Research Award

• 1987 Meritorious Service Award of the State of Louisiana

• 1988 Fellow of National Rehabilitation Counseling Association (FNRCA)

• 1989 Merit Award of Rho Chi Sigma

• 1996 National Citation Award of the National Rehabilitation Counseling Association

• 1999 Exceptional Leadership Award of the National Association for Multicultural Rehabilitation Concerns (NAMRC)

• 2000 Bobbie J. Atkins Research Award of NAMRC

• 2000 Louisiana Rehabilitation Association Seid Hendrix Memorial Award

• 2001 National Council on Rehabilitation Education (NCRE) Rehabilitation Educator of the Year Award

• 2002 Consortium of Administrators of Native American Rehabilitation (CANAR) Recognition Award

He was the President of the:

• Louisiana Rehabilitation Association

• Louisiana Rehabilitation Counseling Association

• Southwest National Rehabilitation Counseling Association

• National Rehabilitation Counseling Association

• Currently, he is the President of the National Rehabilitation Association-Vocational Evaluation and Work Adjustment Association (NRA-VEWAA).

Dr. Kundu has served as Consultant to Regions II, IV, and VI Rehabilitation Cultural Diversity Initiative (RCDI). Currently, he served as a Consultant to the National Council on Disability (NCD), the Disability Research Institute (DRI) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Howard University Research and Training Center for Access to Rehabilitation and Empowerment Opportunity in Washington, D.C. As the Director of the Rehabilitation Capacity Building Project (RCBP) at Southern University, he assisted in obtaining a total of 50 grants amounting to more than $60 million in collaboration with other RCBPs.

His areas of research interest are: multicultural/cultural diversity issues, placement models, prediction models for rehabilitation outcome, traumatic brain injury, and independent living.

Chrisann Schiro-Geist
Professor (Ph. D. Northwestern, 1974) of Community Health and Managing Director of the Disability Research Institute http://www.als.uiuc.edu/dri
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
158 Rehabilitation Education Center
1207 S. Oak Street
Champaign, Il 61820
Phone: (217) 244-5176
Email: chrisann@uiuc.edu

Dr. Schiro-Geist has been a rehabilitation counselor educator since 1975. She taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1975-1987 and has been a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) from 1987 to the present. Dr. Schiro-Geist has been a Licensed Clinical Psychologist as well as a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor since 1976. She holds Diplomate status in the American Board of Vocational Experts (1995-present).

She was the founding-editor of the journal Rehabilitation Education (1986-92) and President of the Council on Rehabilitation Education (CORE) from 1982-85. Dr. Schiro-Geist has held numerous professional offices and chairs in the Illinois Rehabilitation Counseling Association, Great Lakes Regional Rehabilitation Counseling Association, Illinois Rehabilitation Association and National Council in Rehabilitation Education.

Dr. Schiro-Geist's research deals with the improvement of the quality of life of persons with disabilities. She has developed a data bank of information on university-educated persons with disabilities who graduate form UIUC from 1952 to 1992. In her role as Managing Director of the Disability Research Institute at UIUC, the has taken the lead in the development of a psychosocial instrument for the assessment of motivation to return-to-work as part of the Early Intervention Demonstration project funded by the Social Security Administration and mandated as part of the 1999 Ticket to Work legislation. She is also involved in research on the efficiency of animal-assisted therapy for severely disabled children and has collected data in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois.

Dr. Schiro-Geist is the 2000 winner of the UIUC campus-wide "Excellence in Off-Campus Teaching" award, the Outstanding Rehabilitation Educator Award presented at Annual Meeting in Miami, FL, May 2000 by the International Association of Rehabilitation professionals and the National Rehabilitation Association-W.F.Faulkes Award presented at Annual Meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi, in November 2001. Dr. Schiro-Geist is the author of over 50 scholarly publications and two books as well as having been the principal presenter at over 100 refereed presentations in her 27 years as a University professor. Dr. Schiro-Geist has been interested in multicultural issues for several years. She created the non-credit course for the UWStout RCEPon Understanding How Society Views Persons with Disabilties.during her relationship as a partner in that RCEPin the spring of 1999She has delivered academic coursework on mutlit-cultural issues in multiple distance formats.She has also taught Social and Cultural Aspects of Disabilties and Cross-Cultural Issues in Community Health. Dr. Schiro-Geist coordinated the first international MS in Rehabilitation Counseling,delivered to a cohort of 20 students in Tipperary Ireland. The skills she gained in facilitating the creation of this new enterprise will be highly transferable in the-organization and -establishment of training activities in this Capacity Buiilfding Project.