Zina Yzquierdo

Research Assistant Professor of Special Education

Ph.D., University of New Mexico, 1995

Short Biography

Zina Amelia Yzquierdo is a Research Assistant Professor of Special Education and Member of the John F. Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development. She is a module developer for the IRIS Center for Faculty Enhancement, funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs. The IRIS Center's main goal is to provide course enhancement materials for non-special education faculty members who train pre-service general education teachers, school administrators, school nurses, and school counselors so they are better prepared to work with students who have disabilities and with their families. In working towards the project's goal, she is involved in translating special education research to practice, which is done by creating online interactive modules. The modules are used in non-special education teacher training programs throughout the United States, and in other countries including Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Venezuela and Israel. IRIS content materials include a variety of specialty areas such as high stakes testing, cultural and linguistic diversity, early reading strategies, and collaborative school practices for school administrators.

Zina was part of the very successful Alliance Project, a federally funded project, which provided technical assistance to faculty from minority institutions of higher education who prepare college students from historically under-represented groups for careers in special education and related services. Within this scope of work, Zina provided mentoring services to faculty members submitting personnel preparation grants to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). She also served as a reviewer for the OSEP grant selection panel. Since 1999, she has been a reviewer for the journal TEACHING Exceptional Children.

Zina has had considerable experience teaching children with disabilities including children from culturally and linguistically diverse exceptional backgrounds. Her teaching tenure is varied in terms of the types of programs (e.g., learning disabilities, severe and profound disabilities, communication disorders) and the types of settings in which she has worked (e.g., Head Start, elementary, middle and high schools, Department of Defense Dependent Schools, Peace Corps in Paraguay, South America). In the spring of 2004, Zina presented training about working with students with mild mental retardation for members from the Guatemalan Ministry of Education, university faculty members and exemplar teachers selected from various regions of the country. Because Zina is fluent in Spanish, she was able to present the entire training in Spanish for the participants.

Areas of Specialization

Bilingual Special Education
Speech and Language Pathology
Star Legacy Module Development

Learn More about Zina Yzquierdo:

Projects | Courses Taught
Selected Publications | CV

Courses Taught

Education of the Exceptional Person, Instructional Strategies in Special Education, Teaching the Learning Disabled

Faculty Directory

Open Faculty Positions