Rate My Professor Mindy Ely

Dr. Mindy Ely is Associate Chair of the Department of Special Education in the College of Education at Illinois State University, a position she holds after joining the faculty in 2014 as an assistant professor and subsequent promotion to associate professor. An Illinois State University alumna from the class of 1991, she serves as program coordinator for the Master of Science in Education in low vision and blindness, a fully online five-semester program launched with its first cohort in summer 2021. This initiative, accepting new students biennially, equips educators with endorsements to teach students from preschool through high school, covering Braille reading and writing, assistive technology, functional vision assessments, learning media assessments, and the expanded core curriculum. Dr. Ely teaches in the Low Vision and Blindness program and has contributed to statewide efforts addressing the critical shortage of teachers for visually impaired students, including coordination of the EL VISTA project for early intervention vision specialists.

Dr. Ely's research specializations include early intervention for infants and toddlers who are blind or visually impaired, cerebral visual impairment (CVI), digital access needs for blind and low-vision youth, and roles and responsibilities of vision professionals. As principal investigator—succeeding co-principal investigator Dr. Maribeth Lartz upon her 2020 retirement—she leads the LIMITLESS program, funded by a $1.23 million U.S. Department of Education grant awarded in 2020 to train interdisciplinary educators for children who are deaf or blind. She co-developed the ALEX Program for CVI with Easterseals Illinois in 2020, serving as research lead and developing an assessment protocol, and chairs the Neurological Visual Impairment Division of the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired. Her key publications include 'Roles and Responsibilities When Learners Have CVI: Perspectives From Vision Professionals' (2024, co-authored with Ashley Strausbaugh and Amy Yount), 'Exploring Blind and Low-Vision Youth’s Digital Access Needs in School: Toward Accessible Instructional Technologies' (2024), and contributions to 'Disability, Learning, and Education: A Guidebook' (2024, with Natalie L. Shaheen and others). Dr. Ely received the 2020 Teaching Initiative Award for her work on LIMITLESS, the low vision and blindness master’s program, and the ALEX Program, and was inducted into the College of Education Million Dollar Club in 2025.