Rachel Brown-Chidsey, Ph.D., NCSP is a native Alaskan. She attended Whitman College where she earned a B.A. in history. From there she went to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst (UMass) and earned a M.A. in history with a focus on colonial American religion. She earned a M.A.T. in history education from Smith College and taught middle and high school social studies and history in Western Massachusetts for five years. She returned to UMass to take classes for special education certification. This led to enrollment in the doctoral program in special education at UMass. As emerging trends in general and special education pointed to prevention of disabilities, Dr. Brown-Chidsey transferred into the school psychology doctoral program at UMass. She graduated with a Ph.D. from that program in 2000. Since fall 2000, she has been a faculty member at the University of Southern Maine. Her research has included studies of different curriculum-based measures of reading, reading instruction methods, and response to intervention (RTI). She is married and has a daughter. She and her family spend the school year in Maine and summers in Alaska. Dr. Brown-Chidsey is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist, and both certified and licensed as a School Psychologist in Alaska and Maine.