Literacy Education Chairs

Dr. Cynthia Brock, Wyoming Excellence Chair in Elementary Literacy Education (B.S. Elementary Education, minor Math Education, Oregon State University; M.Ed. in Reading & Language Arts, Washington State University; Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, Focus: Literacy & English Learners, Michigan State University). 

Cynthia Brock is a professor at the University of Wyoming where she holds the Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Elementary Literacy Education.  Dr. Brock’s scholarly research agenda centers on the study of opportunities-for-learning literacy.  Her various studies have explored children’s learning, pre- and in-service teachers’ learning in university classrooms as well as professional development contexts, and her and her colleagues’ learning.  She explores the literacy learning opportunities of elementary children from diverse cultural, linguistic and economic backgrounds, and she studies ways to work with pre- and in-service teachers to foster the literacy learning opportunities of children from non-dominant backgrounds.  She has conducted qualitative research in cross-cultural contexts including the United States, Australia, England, Fiji, Thailand, Laos, Spain, Chile and Costa Rica.  She has published her work in journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, Teaching and Teacher Education, The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Curriculum Inquiry, Urban Education, The Elementary School Journal, and Pedagogies:  An International Journal.  She has also published her work in numerous books and handbooks.  Dr. Brock has provided service at the local, state, national and international levels such as:  (1) Board member for the Literacy Research Association (LRA), Area Chair for LRA, and member of LRA’s Early Career Award Committee; (2) member of the International Literacy Association’s (ILA) Nominating Committee and ILA’s Research Grants Program; and (3) member of the National Council of Teachers of English’s (NCTE) Standing Committee on Research and member of NCTE’s Promising Researcher Award Committee.

Dr. Leigh A. Hall, Wyoming Excellence Chair in Literacy Education (B.S. Elementary Education, Univ. of South Florida; M.Ed. Elementary Education, Vanderbilt University; Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction, Michigan State University).  Dr. Hall examines how teachers can work with diverse learners to help them improve their abilities to read and write academic texts. 

Dr. Hall is particularly interested in the role technology can play in enhancing instruction to achieve these goals. Her research has received several awards including the Outstanding Dissertation award from the International Literacy Association, the Early Career Achievement Award, and the Edward B. Fry Book Award for Empowering Struggling Readers: Practices for the Middle Grades (both from the Literacy Research Association. She has published in such journals as Research in the Teaching of English, Journal of Literacy Research, Teachers College Record, and Harvard Educational Review.