Jill Locke, PhD

Jill Locke, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Washington (UW) in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, core faculty at the UW School Mental Health, Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center and research affiliate at the Seattle Children’s Autism Center. To date, her research has focused on the: 1) presentation of social impairment for youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in inclusive school settings; 2) identification of best practices for youth with ASD; and 3) understanding of successful implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices (EBPs) for youth with ASD in public school settings. She was the principal investigator of two foundation grants that highlighted the importance of the organizational context in successful implementation of EBPs. She is currently the principal investigator on a NIMH K01 Career Development Award that uses quantitative and qualitative methods to examine individual- and organizational-level factors as predictors of EBP implementation in self-contained settings for children with ASD. Her experiences have highlighted the importance of collaborating with public schools and the reality of working within the constraints of publicly funded systems, their timeline (e.g. school calendar year), and with their personnel.