Reginald Alston, Ph.D.

Reginald J. Alston, Ph.D., is Professor and Associate Head of the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received his B.S. in psychology and M.S. in rehabilitation counseling from South Carolina State University. His Ph.D. degree in rehabilitation was completed at Florida State University. He has taught numerous courses, including disability in American society, medical aspects of disability, psychosocial aspects of disability, and research methods in health sciences.

His research focuses primarily on disparities in rehabilitation outcomes and psychosocial adjustment for African Americans with disabilities. He has published extensively in leading journals of rehabilitation, and he has successfully secured research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

In 2005, he received the King James McCristal Distinguished Scholar Award from the College of Applied Health Sciences at UIUC, and in 2006 he was the recipient of the Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching from the College of Applied Health Sciences. Also in 2006, he was selected by the College of Medicine at UIUC as the Medical Scholars Program Outstanding Advisor of the Year. As evidence of his national reputation for scholarship, he received the James F. Garrett Award for a Distinguished Career in Rehabilitation Research from the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association in 2007.

Dr. Alston has served as editor of the Journal of Applied Rehabilitation Counseling and executive board member of the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association and the Council on Rehabilitation Education.