Literacy Research Center & Clinic

 

A Vision made real: The UW Literacy Research Center and Clinic Creates New Opportunities for Wyoming

A University of Wyoming facility vision that began as a focal point for literacy education research opened this spring as an outreach hub designed to initiate and support programs across the state and to host collaborative research with scholars around the nation and the world. With the March 2014 opening of the new UW Literacy Research Center and Clinic (LRCC) comes new opportunities in three areas:

• To provide a home base for UW faculty and graduate students researching literacy across the lifespan
• To connect, support and expand existing literacy programs across Wyoming
• To invite visiting scholars with literacy research expertise to collaborate and contribute.

Expanding, transforming literacy education in Wyoming

Core literacy education programs at UW focus on four areas: family literacy, early childhood literacy, disciplinary literacies, and tutoring of struggling readers. Each area now sees potential expansion with the increased capacity that the Center represents. For example, UW faculty and graduate students are exploring ways to expand a local student tutoring program to reach more areas of the state. UW instructional staff will be able to draw from the Albany County model to recruit, train and support literacy-expert tutors located around Wyoming using distance technologies housed at the center. Technology also will create new opportunities to deliver customized to fit local (e.g., district-based) or general statewide professional development programming.  An example of that service is a series of 22 half-day family literacy workshops delivered to Wyoming Department of Family Services staff. Programs like that series, originally delivered face to face, can now be delivered via the state’s Outreach Video Network (OVN) system or using webconferencing tools from the Center. Not only does the LRCC offer a campus home for UW’s own literacy researchers, it  also offers space and funding) for visiting faculty scholars interested both in developing their own research agendas and in contributing to the Center’s programs. Dedicated office space is available for faculty from other institutions to come to UW during their sabbaticals. Private funding will allow some of those scholars to extend sabbatical time from six months to a year, with the proviso that half of their work be spent supporting one or more programs sponsored by the literacy center.