About the Contributors to "The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research"

Coleen D. Carlson, Ph.D., Associate Research Professor, Psychology Department, University of Houston, and Associate Director, Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and, Statistics Dr. Carlson’s research interests include measurement development and psychometric evaluation, advanced statistical methods, program evaluation, and early literacy and language development in English- and Spanish-speaking students.

Jane G. Coggshall, Doctoral Candidate, Educational Administration and Policy Program, University of Michigan School of Education. After graduating with honors from Princeton University, Ms. Coggshall taught middle school mathematics for 3 years in New York City. Her research interests include organizational theory, educational policy making, and teaching improvement and assessment.

Harris Cooper, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Program in Education, Duke University. Dr. Cooper is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Program in Education at Duke University. He is also editor of the American Psychological Association’s journal Psychological Bulletin, which publishes research
syntheses.

Linnea C. Ehri, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology, Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Dr. Ehri’s research has contributed to the understanding of how beginners learn to read and spell words. Dr. Ehri has received research awards from the American Educational Research Association, the International Reading Association, the National Reading Conference, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR). She is a past president of SSSR and was a member of the National Reading Panel.

Jack M. Fletcher, Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Director, Center for Academic and Reading Skills, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. For the past 25 years, Dr. Fletcher, a child neuropsychologist, has conducted research on many aspects of the development of reading, language, and other cognitive skills in children. He has worked extensively on issues related to learning and attention problems, including definition and classification, neurobiological correlates, and, most recently, intervention.

Barbara R. Foorman, Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Director, Center for Academic and Reading Skills, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Dr. Foorman directs many federal grants, is on the editorial boards of many journals, and has been actively involved in outreach to the schools and to the general public.

David J. Francis, Ph.D., Professor of Quantitative Methods and Chair, Department of Psychology, University of Houston, and Director, Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics, Houston, TX. Dr. Francis is a fellow of Division 5 (Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics) of the American Psychological Association and a member of the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Society, American Statistical Association, the International Neuropsychological Society, the National Association of Bilingual Education, and the National Council on Measurement in Education. He serves on the Independent Review Panel for the National Assessment of Title I, the National Advisory Committee for the National Center for Educational Accountability, and the National Technical Advisory Group of the What Works Clearinghouse for the U.S. Department of Education and is a member of the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Youth and Children.

Claude Goldenberg, Ph.D., Professor and Associate Dean, College of Education, The California State University, Long Beach, CA. Dr. Goldenberg has taught junior high school in San Antonio, Texas, and first grade in a bilingual elementary school in the Los Angeles area. He is involved in a number of research projects focusing on Latino children’s academic development, home and school influences on Latino children’s academic achievement, and the processes and dynamics of school change. He is a member of the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Youth and Children.

John T. Guthrie, Ph.D., Professor and Director of Maryland Literacy Research Center, Department of Human Development, University of Maryland. Dr. Guthrie investigates the reading engagement and motivation of children and adolescents. He has designed and implemented a teaching framework, Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction, that increases engagement and reading achievement for students in the later elementary grades. He has published more than 150 articles and book chapters, edited more than 10 books, and received multiple research awards.

Nicole M. Humenick, Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Human Development, University of Maryland. Ms. Humenick’s research interests include reading motivation and engagement and literacy development.

Michael L. Kamil, Ph.D., Professor, School of Education at Stanford University. Dr. Kamil was a member of the National Reading Panel and the RAND Reading Study Group and is a member of the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth. He is Chair of the Planning Committee for the Reading Framework of the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress and is the lead editor of Handbook of Reading Research, Volume III (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000). In addition, he has edited, authored, or coauthored more than 100 books, chapters, and journal articles.

Barbara K. Keogh, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, Graduate School of Education, and Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine. Dr. Keogh’s research has focused on children with learning disabilities or developmental problems and their families. She is the author of Temperament in the Classroom: Understanding Individual Differences (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2003).

W. Einar Mencl, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT Dr. Mencl is an experimental psychologist whose background includes work in auditory perception, cognition, and neural network modeling. His current research applies functional neuroimaging techniques to investigate brain function.

Cecil G. Miskel, Ed.D., M.S., Professor of Educational Administration and Policy, University of Michigan School of Education. With grants from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement and the Spencer Foundation, Dr. Miskel has recently completed extensive 5-year investigations of reading policy at the national level, including Reading First, and in nine states. He is particularly interested in examining what factors bring reading to the top of the policy agenda, the processes involved in producing reading policy, and the people, organizations, and their relationships active in the policy arena. Professor Miskel is now writing two books
focusing on reading policy.

Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D., Director of Literacy Research and Professional Development, Sopris West Educational Services, Longmont, CO. Dr. Moats has written many articles, chapters, and books on the professional development of teachers of reading. She has worked as an elementary school teacher, resource teacher, learning specialist, college and graduate school instructor, practicing psychologist, researcher, and writer. She heads the program LETRS: Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling at Sopris West.

Robin D. Morris, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies & Regents and Professor of Psychology, Georgia State University. Dr. Morris has focused his scholarly and clinical work on the biological and environmental causes of reading problems, reading disabilities, dyslexia, and other learning, attentional, and developmental problems in children and adults with a variety of disorders.

Andrew C. Papanicolaou, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Division of Clinical Neurosciences, Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Dr. Papanicolaou, a neuropsychologist, has conducted extensive research in human neurophysiology, studying the neural bases of language, memory, and emotions with both healthy volunteers and patients.

Sharolyn D. Pollard-Durodola, Ed.D., M.S., M.A.T., Coordinator of Education Outreach, Department of Pediatrics, Center for Academic and Reading Skills, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Dr. Pollard-Durodola coordinates two projects in the 5-year program study, “Oracy/Literacy Development in Spanish-Speaking Students,” funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Institute of Education Sciences. For Project III, she conducts interrater reliability checks across sites, coordinates classroom observations of students in kindergarten through second grade, and provides training to classroom observers. For Project V, she assists in the development of a supplemental, intensive proactive Spanish curriculum and intervention program and in the ongoing training and professional development for intervention implementers.

Kenneth R. Pugh, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Yale School of Medicine; Senior Scientist, Haskins Laboratories. Dr. Pugh’s primary research interests are in the areas of cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics. His research program examines the neurobiology of language development with a particular emphasis on reading and reading disability and employs combined behavioral and functional neuroimaging techniques. He also directs the National Institutes of Health–funded Yale Reading Study.

Kelle Reach, M.A., Doctoral Student, Department of Psychology, University of Missouri–Columbia. Ms. Reach is a doctoral student in child clinical psychology at the University of Missouri–Columbia.

Valerie F. Reyna, Ph.D., Director, Informatics and Decision-Making Laboratory, University of Arizona College of Medicine; Director, Division of Learning, Technology, and Assessment, Arizona Research Laboratories; and Professor of Surgery, Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, Women’s Studies, Mexican American Studies, and Public Health, Arizona Health Sciences Center. Dr. Reyna prepared her chapter while serving as senior research advisor in the U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Assistant Secretary and the Institute of Education Sciences. She is the author of numerous publications concerning learning and cognition and is a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society.

William M. Saunders, Ph.D., Research Psychologist, The California State University, Long Beach, CA. Dr. Saunders is Director of the Getting Results Network, an external provider that helps schools improve teaching, learning, and achievement through goal setting, assessment, professional development, and administrative, and teacher leadership. Dr. Saunders is also Co-principal Investigator on several research projects. His areas of focus include school change, elementary school education, assessment, and instruction for English language learners.

Timothy Shanahan, Ph.D., Professor of Urban Education and Director, Center for Literacy, University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Shanahan’s research focuses on the relationship of reading and writing, school improvement, and reading assessment. He was a member of the National Reading Panel and is chair of the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth and the National Early Literacy Panel.

Bennett A. Shaywitz, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, and Co-director, NICHD–Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. Dr. Bennett A. Shaywitz is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and recipient of the 2003 Distinguished Alumni Award from Washington University in St. Louis.

Sally E. Shaywitz, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Yale University School of Medicine, and Co-director, NICHD–Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. Dr. Sally E. Shaywitz is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, was a member of the National Reading Panel, and is the author of Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).

Panagiotis G. Simos, Ph.D., Associate Professor, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Dr. Simos, a cognitive neuroscientist, uses functional brain imagining techniques, such as magnetoencephalography, to study the neurological bases of language and memory functions, including reading.

Mengli Song, Ph.D., Research Scientist, American Institutes for Research, Washington, D.C. Dr. Song’s research interests include education policy and politics, program evaluation, quantitative methodology, and social network analysis.

Steven A. Stahl, Ed.D., Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dr. Stahl teaches courses in reading education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is Co-director of the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement. Prior to pursuing doctoral studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he was a special education teacher in New York and Maine. He has conducted research in many aspects of reading education and has a long-standing interest in beginning reading instruction and vocabulary instruction.

Robert W. Sweet, Jr., Professional Staff Member, Committee on Education
and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. For 20 years Mr. Sweet served as a high school teacher, educational textbook salesman, and teacher trainer for McGraw-Hill and Holt, Rinehart & Winston. In 1981 Mr. Sweet joined the Reagan Administration and held positions at the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institute for Education, and the White House. Under President George H.W. Bush he was Administrator for Juvenile Justice and was Associate Director for the Children’s Bureau at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He is a professional staff member on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce and focuses on improving reading instruction in the United States. He was the primary author of the Reading First initiative and helped define the term scientifically based research, now noted in law more than 100 times.

Joseph K. Torgesen, Ph.D., Robert M. Gagne Professor of Psychology and Education and Director, Florida Center for Reading Research, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL. Dr. Torgesen’s research interests include instructional methods for the prevention and remediation of reading disabilities and assessment practices for the early identification of children at risk for reading difficulties.