By Jennifer Kiilerich
In an outpatient waiting room at the Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, occupational therapist Kevin Durney noticed a problem: the space where children and families spent time before appointments felt sterile, with nothing to do that reflected the kids who sat there. He wanted to fill the room with books that showed the strengths of characters with disabilities and depicted them as full, interesting people who weren't defined by their differences. But locating the right titles was harder than he expected.
Then he found the IRIS Center, which had already built a database of the very books he was searching for.
For 25 years, the IRIS Center at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development has been creating free, online resources that turn education research into accessible, next-day materials that people like Durney can use. In 2025 alone, the center served 1.6 million people across 228 countries and territories, a scale its founders could hardly have imagined when the project launched at Vanderbilt in 2001.
"We are so proud of the work we have been doing for the past quarter century," said IRIS Center director Naomi Tyler, "and we are excited to keep building."
The organization's latest annual report tracked IRIS Center use across every U.S. state and territory, in 1,200 public school districts, and at 1,500 colleges and universities. "We are embedded now throughout the educator preparation ecosystem," said Tyler, also associate professor of the practice in special education. In addition, hundreds of health-related entities accessed the tools, along with judicial systems, museums and more.
What began as a federal grant project to strengthen teacher preparation has grown into a global resource used in schools, colleges, hospitals, state training programs and more.
How IRIS began: Rewriting teacher preparation
In the late 1990s, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs had begun to identify a critical gap: most students with disabilities were learning in general education classrooms, yet teachers reported feeling unprepared to work with these students. Faculty in college elementary and secondary education programs also reported that they lacked training and foundational knowledge to prepare future teachers for the learners they would inevitably serve.
That insight led to IRIS's first U.S. Department of Education grant in 2001, with a clear goal: equip general education faculty to teach special education content more effectively.
With federal support, IRIS resources began reaching college classrooms. Tyler recalled purchasing email lists to spread the word, but as soon as the first IRIS-trained teachers entered K-12 schools, demand grew organically. Soon, school leaders were turning to IRIS not just for teacher preparation, but for professional development.
Since then, subsequent grants from the U.S. Department of Education have expanded the endeavor to include multiple initial preparation pathways and ongoing professional development, while the roster of education personnel continues to grow: elementary, secondary and special education teachers; school leaders; related service providers (e.g., school counselors, speech-language pathologists); paraeducators; school resource officers and more.
IRIS's broad appeal and success can be traced to its delivery. Tyler calls it "IRIS-izing": transforming somewhat dense, peer-reviewed research findings into something a teacher can absorb at the end of a long day, without watering down the content. That means chunking information into digestible nuggets-often integrating videos, audio interviews, and interactive practice activities-that are combined and scaffolded in a way that gives educators a wealth of knowledge by the time they finish a resource. "Nothing like that really existed at the time," Tyler said.
Today, the website includes IRIS Modules (the center's signature resource), case studies, fundamental skills sheets, information briefs and many other tools. While rooted in helping teachers support students with disabilities, the materials also extend to broader classroom practice. In 2025, some of the most-used modules focused on Universal Design for Learning and differentiated instruction, both of which aim to maximize the education of all students.
Building a better waiting room
Durney's waiting room library shows how the center's tools move beyond classrooms. Before finding the IRIS resource, he and doctoral student Allison Antman had spent most of their off hours and time between patients scouring Google for books.
"I don't think that we could have pulled the whole thing off if we didn't have that assistance," Durney said. Ultimately, they selected 170 books that pulled heavily from the IRIS database, completing the library in late 2024.
The IRIS Center's searchable list breaks down titles by disability topic and age range, making it simple for anyone to find stories shedding a positive light on characters with disabilities. And annual updates allow Durney to keep growing the library.
