When you support the KU Life Span Institute, you help our efforts to realize a future where everyone across the spectrum of intellectual and physical ability can attain the best quality of life. Your gifts fuel the research, service and outreach that empower marginalized and underserved people to fully engage with society and live self-determined lives.
When you support the KU Life Span Institute, you help our efforts to realize a future where everyone across the spectrum of intellectual and physical ability can attain the best quality of life. Your gifts fuel the research, service and outreach that empower marginalized and underserved people to fully engage with society and live self-determined lives.
We invite you to join the Life Span Institute’s mission to discover, develop and deliver approaches to improve the health and development of people in Kansas, throughout the region and beyond. We are nearly 500 scientists, staff and graduate students pursuing a vision of society in which everyone is able to participate fully in society and lead self-determined lives, irrespective of intellectual or physical ability.
For 70 years, we have pursued research that matters — to all of us.
Research at the KU Life Span Institute began in the 1960s with the goal of better understanding the needs and development of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Our focus was on inclusion and equity, which we have carried through seven decades while also evolving and broadening work to include research, service and outreach across the fields of education, behavioral science and neuroscience.
Today, the Life Span Institute’s hundreds of researchers in 14 research centers and programs develop solutions to complex challenges across the human life span. We mentor new scientists who go on to make discoveries, at KU and institutions around the world, that change lives. Our research in the classroom helps schools and teachers build equity and support all students. We develop strategies to support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to communicate with their families, pursue education among their peers and realize their aspirations for meaningful work and careers. Our commitment to service in the state of Kansas connects people with resources to foster and maintain their independence at home.
We invite you to help us build the future on the foundation we established 70 years ago. Join us in creating a place where individuals and families can connect directly with researchers and future scientists, and importantly, with each other.
Now is the time to make a transformative gift to the Life Span Institute to address the following priorities:
At the present time, it is difficult for families with children, adolescents, or adults who have intellectual and developmental disabilities, or IDD, to obtain timely services in Kansas and the surrounding states. Families may endure months of waiting for evaluations and care. We are seeking to establish a clinic that would provide assessment and treatment services for families and advance our ability to translate our research into practice. Along with offering high-quality and prompt diagnostic and intervention services, establishing an IDD clinic would also support our instructional mission by providing a venue for graduate students and postdoctoral trainees to gain valuable experience with these clinical populations.
The Life Span Institute has always been a home to early career scientists, and we have historically been at the forefront of training the next generation of researchers in health and human development. Additional research funding for junior faculty members is essential to support their work and clinical experiences as they embark into their fields. Gifts to support postdoctoral stipends, pilot research, early career travel and conference attendance will accelerate the career course for these new scientists and support their continued work toward solutions for the life span.
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1891 Constant Ave, Lawrence, KS 66047 | PO Box 928, Lawrence, KS 66044 | 785•832•7400 | 800•444•4201