Federico R. Waitoller

Federico Waitoller is a professor at the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research agenda focuses on inclusive education, with two distinct strands. First, Dr. Waitoller's work examines the access, experiences, and educational outcomes of students with disabilities in school choice programs. Second, his work examines ways to enhance teacher learning and pedagogies for inclusive education. He is also the host and producer of DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates and the author of two award-winning books: Excluded by Choice: Urban Students with Disabilities in the Education Marketplace and Sustaining Disabled Youth: Centering Disabilities in Asset Pedagogies. Dr. Waitoller received UIC’s Researcher of the Year award in 2018, the Rising Star in Social Sciences Award, a Fulbright Fellowship to work at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, and the Distinguished Researcher Award from the Special and Inclusive Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association in 2023.