Elizabeth Bauer

"Celebrating Transition Planners: Essential Guides on the Road to the Future"

Transition Planners are essential guides on the road to the future for students of all abilities. By applying Universal Design for Learning Principles in planning for transition, they smooth the route each student travels toward his or her preferred future. UDL principles aim to minimize barriers and maximize learning by flexibly accommodating individual differences, and uses multiple, flexible methods of presentation, expression and apprenticeship and options for engagement. Every student can learn and all can aspire higher. UDL leads to purposeful engagement of student learning and achievement of desired educational outcomes: self-determination, independence, integration into the community, and economic self-sufficiency.

Liz Bauer recently completed an 8 –year term on the Michigan State Board of Education during which she led the State Board’s educational technology initiative and was a member of the National Association of State Boards of Education Work Group on Career and Technical Education. She counts as her most important contribution and accomplishment, the Board’s adoption of Universal Education: Vision and Principles as the framework and foundation for policy development by the State Board, Michigan Department of Education, and local and intermediate school districts.