Utahns nominated to Council on Disability

WASHINGTON — The White House nominated two Utah residents with long track records of working with the disabled to the National Council on Disability.

Kristen Cox, the state's executive director of the Department of Workforce Services, and Marvin G. Fifield, of Utah State University, now must wait for their Senate confirmations before becoming members of the council.

Cox previously established and led the Department of Disabilities for Maryland.

In 2001, President Bush appointed Cox, who is blind, as a special assistant to the commissioner of Rehabilitation Services Administration in the U.S. Department of Education. She is a graduate of Brigham Young University.

Fifield, who lives in Logan, is a principal investigator for the Indian Children's Program at Utah State University's Center for Persons with Disabilities. Although he retired in 2000, Fifield said he still runs the program he helped start in 1991. Fifield also is the former director of the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University and is a professor emeritus of psychology and special education and rehabilitation.