Bowling Green, Ky. - Phillip Proctor placed the final piece into the Clinical Education Complex logo puzzle Friday morning, signifying the official opening of the center.

Phillip, the 7-year-old autistic grandson of CEC Charter Committee Chair Suzanne Vitale, beamed as he and the directors of the six programs that make up the CEC were greeted with a standing ovation.

“Just as the image of a jigsaw puzzle comes into focus when all of the pieces are in place, the CEC … comes into focus with all of its pieces in place,” said Mary Lloyd Moore, CEC director.

“We hope that the services offered at the Clinical Education Complex will help families solve any number of puzzles they may be trying to solve,” she said. Six components come together to form the CEC to help families find solutions, and “hence the CEC puzzle logo,” Dr. Moore said.

The CEC building, located at 14th Avenue and Adams Street, will serve as an important extension of Western Kentucky University.  It will house six programs: the Kelly Autism Program, the Acquired Brain Injury Resource Program, the Communication Disorders Clinic, the Early Childhood Center, the Family Counseling Clinic, and the Family Resource Center.

As she introduced her grandson, Ms. Vitale called the CEC a “truly collaborative effort with members of the WKU family and the community family working together toward a common goal. That goal is to make a better and more independent life for our special needs children and young people throughout our community.”
WKU President Gary Ransdell said the CEC is an example of how the university and the community can partner to meet a need.

“At WKU these days we are about identifying and solving problems that affect people within our reach,” he said. “People in this community identified a problem and set about the business of solving it and we could not be more proud to play a role in helping to bring those solutions to our community and to the young people who need those solutions.”

This fall there will be seven students at WKU with autism. “These students will be living in our residence halls, mainstreamed into our classes, and having a life of great promise that just a few years ago they couldn’t even dream about,” Dr. Ransdell said. “That’s what the Clinical Education Complex is about. That’s what the Kelly Autism Program is about. That’s what we’re about as a community, certainly as a university community.”
While Friday’s celebration was focused on the physical structure that will house the programs, Dr. Ransdell reminded the audience that it is the program that is important. “This is just the place where important work occurs,” he said.

The CEC is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project that will create a comprehensive clinical setting for education and health and human services professionals, said Tom Hiles, WKU vice president for Institutional Advancement.  “It builds upon a strong tradition at WKU to meet local community needs, fill service delivery gaps, provide opportunities for applied research, and enrich both undergraduate and graduate students’ educational experiences through an interdisciplinary team approach,” he said.

Dr. Ransdell called the CEC a “truly interdisciplinary effort. I am very proud of the way our faculty have partnered with the leadership across this community to make something so important come to fruition.”

Provost Barbara Burch said there is a theme of engagement that runs across the WKU campus. “We talk about engaging our faculty and our students in ways that increasingly connect them to the community,” she said. That engagement produces a more lasting learning experience “that helps our students develop habits, attitudes and skills that make them contributors to the community in addition to achieving strong academic preparation for their careers,” she added.

Dr. Burch said the CEC “gives us an opportunity, most important of all, to fill a service gap where it exists and to be doing what a great university should be doing—making a difference in the lives of the people it serves.”

The CEC received a $1 million boost this week from two major gifts. The Center for Special Needs Trust Administration of Clearwater, Fla., through director Leo Govoni, committed $750,000. Of that, $250,000 will support an endowment for the Kelly Autism Program (KAP) and $500,000 will help fund the completion of the CEC building.

Also this week, John and Linda Kelly, who founded the KAP four years ago with a gift, pledged $250,000 to start the KAP endowment.

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

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