Pete Flexer, Ph.D.
Professor
Special Education

Director
Center for Innovation in Transition and Employment

Office:  318 White Hall
Telephone:  (330) 672-0584
Email:  rflexer@kent.edu

Robert W. Flexer, Ph.D., Professor and Director of the Center for Innovation in Transition and Employment, is a professor of SPED and Principal Investigator for this project and has directed fifteen federally funded interdisciplinary graduate training and demonstration programs at KSU since 1985. In 1985 he introduced the first university-based work experience program for youth with disabilities (The Cooperative Transition Services program). This program has grown into a self-supporting program supporting more than thirty secondary students at KSU each year. In the past five years, this program has been replicated at three Kent regional campuses and other universities in Ohio. Dr. Flexer has been a long time proponent of the need for universities to become involved in helping youth with disabilities in the transition to adulthood. He recently co-authored a book Transition Planning For Secondary Students with Disabilities (Flexer, Simmons, Luft & Baer, 2001.)

Dr. Flexer has been a leader in interdisciplinary personnel preparation and staff development at Kent State and Ohio. At KSU, he created the Center for Innovation in Transition and Employment (CITE) that has provided interdisciplinary masters and Ph.D level training. This program has been recognized as Ohio’s leading producers of masters and Ph.D. graduates in transition. The Center features a hands-on field experience with youth with disabilities in employment and postsecondary settings. Graduate and undergraduate students work with youth with disabilities throughout their graduate experience, using this fieldwork as the foundation for the application of their training. This year Dr. Flexer obtained funding for the “Leadership in Secondary Regular and Special Education” OSEP grant.


Academic Vita