Southern Miss IDS Director Appointed to National Council on Disability

Dr. Royal P. Walker Jr., executive director of The University of Southern Mississippi Institute for Disability Studies, has been appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Council on Disability (NCD), an independent federal agency that recommends disability policy to the Administration, Congress and other federal agencies.

Walker is one of three new members appointed to the agency who will begin work with NCD immediately. Walker will serve a four-year term with the NCD which includes a team of 15 Presidential appointees.

“I am honored to be appointed to the NCD, allowing me to particularly represent people with disabilities living in rural America,” said Walker, who has served since 2008 as executive director of the Institute for Disability Studies -- Mississippi's University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. “I am grateful to Southern Miss for its support through the years of my career in service to Mississippians with disabilities.”

As IDS executive and associate director, Walker has served on the Governor's Interagency Coordinating Council for Children with Special Needs, the Mississippi Council on Developmental Disabilities, the American Task Force for the Homeless, and chaired the Mississippi March of Dimes. He joined the IDS staff as associate director and instructor in 1992.

Walker is a past president of the Association of University Centers on Disabilities. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Jackson State University and his Juris Doctor degree from Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University.

To learn more about the Institute for Disability Studies at Southern Miss, call 601.266.5163 or visit: http://www.usm.edu/disability-studies