Ellen Mazel

Ellen has over 45 years of expertise in the field of visual impairments, multiple disabilities, deafblindness, CVI, early intervention and transition. She works in the Perkins CVI Center as the Director of Research and Development. CVI is the leading cause of childhood visual impairment in the U.S. Ellen received her Master of Education degree from Boston College in the program for children with deafblindness and multiple disabilities. She has worked in residential programs, educational collaboratives, early intervention programs and public school classrooms. Ellen teaches Cortical/Cerebral Visual Impairment: Assessment and Education, a mandatory class for training Teachers of the Visually Impaired (TVIs), Orientation and Mobility (O&M) specialists and Vision Rehabilitation Specialists in the Vision Studies graduate programs at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She co-created the first graduate, five class, CVI Certificate Program at UMASS Boston. In 2008, Ellen was named National Teacher of the Year for Children with Multiple Disabilities by the Council of Schools for the Blind (COSB). She has presented at multiple conferences, including the New England Association for the Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER), International AER, Massachusetts Early Intervention Consortium and Rett Syndrome Family Education Day. She has been invited to share her CVI expertise with faculty at Boston Children’s Hospital. Ellen was co-author of a peer-reviewed article in the journal, Seminars in Pediatric Neurology, entitled “A Questionnaire Assessing What Teachers of Students with Visual Impairment Know About Cortical/Cerebral Visual Impairment.” Her experience assessing and teaching students with CVI was featured in a National Eye Institute article, which discusses NEI-supported research on new diagnostic and teaching strategies for rehabilitation of brain-based visual impairment.