Dr. Kristin Murphy is an Associate Professor of Special Education at UMass Boston. She currently serves as the Graduate Program Director of the Special Education Program. She earned her Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of Florida. Dr. Murphy’s scholarship focuses on preservice and professional learning opportunities for special educators, mixed reality simulations as an active learning tool, and issues pertaining to exclusionary school settings serving students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Dr. Murphy is a former special educator of students with emotional and behavioral disorders and collectively, she has spent the past seventeen years working in various special education focused teaching, research, and policy roles. Locally, Dr. Murphy has provided special education law focused professional development to over 600 Boston Public Schools teachers and serves in an active leadership role with the MA DESE in mixed reality simulation development for teacher education programs across the state. She has served as the PI or Co-PI on eleven grant-funded projects. On a national level, she serves as co-chair of the Professional Development Committee for CEC's Division for Emotional and Behavioral Health. Dr. Murphy has received several awards in recognition of exemplary teaching and dedication to students including the 2018 Face-to-Face Innovation in Teaching Award, a university-wide UMass Boston award, and the 2020 Manning Prize for Excellence in Teaching, a University of Massachusetts system-wide award. She is the Principal Investigator for Project Teachers Learning with Counselors (TLC), an OSEP 325K grant project funded in Fall 2021.
