by Amy Gage

When literacy and reading-instruction expert Deborah Dillon was invited to apply for a faculty position in the College of Education and Human Development five years ago, she sat up and took notice. She knew the college’s reputation as a first-rate producer of scholars, researchers, and policy in her chosen field.

“Foremost is the impact that graduates have had,” says Dillon, who accepted the invitation and chaired the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the college from 2001–2004. She ticks off a list of college alumni who have headed the National Reading Conference, who lead first-rate graduate programs in literacy at institutions such as the University of Georgia, and who have directed the International Reading Association.

“Our graduates are all over the place. They have a deep respect for what they’ve learned here,” says Dillon, whose own research focuses on adolescents who have lost the motivation to succeed in school. “They’ve done amazing work and prepared excellent students.”

What gives an academic program national respect and renown? At heart it is the people: the scholars who perform groundbreaking research that, in turn, attracts other curious minds, whether graduate-level researchers or undergraduates who one day will make their own impact on the field.

The late Guy Bond is a name that Dillon and other professors consistently evoke when describing the legacy of literacy and reading research in the college. “It was Guy Bond who put Minnesota on the map,” says Barbara Taylor, who held the Guy Bond Chair in Reading, 1997–2000, and codirects the Minnesota Center for Reading Research. “His work was helping teachers and kids who were struggling readers.”

Like Bond, Taylor, who focuses on literacy education, has made a name for the college in her collaborations with classroom teachers. She received two honors in 2005 from the International Reading Association (IRA): the Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading Award and the prestigious Albert J. Harris award for the article “Reading Growth in High-Poverty Classrooms,” an unprecedented achievement in the same year.

Bond himself is best known for the 1967 project “The First Grade Studies.” The nationally renowned investigation “remains the largest and most thorough study ever completed of beginning reading,” according to a recent article honoring Bond’s coauthor, Robert Dykstra—a professor emeritus who himself is a college institution.

Bond and Dykstra examined issues that remain at the core of reading education, Dillon says: “What are the best ways to teach reading? What are the appropriate materials and methods? What kinds of interactions do we expect to see between teachers and children?”

Dillon also cites John Manning, who retired last spring, as a giant in the field. A charismatic and widely published professor, Manning was elected president of the IRA in 1985 and often described schools as places where “morality and ethics” and teachers with “humanity” are as important as book learning and the ABCs.

Today, as the Department of Curriculum and Instruction branches into the study of high-poverty schools, into multicultural literature for young children, and into the study of young readers throughout adolescence, Dillon is hard-pressed to single out any one professor as a star. “All of my colleagues in literacy are people who stand out because they are working on some large projects,” she explains.

Martha Thurlow, director of the National Center on Educational Outcomes based in the college, is collaborating with Dillon to design reading comprehension assessments that allow all children, “regardless of disability,” to be able to take the test and “show what they know,” Dillon explains.

Richard Beach, a professor who studies secondary students’ responses to multicultural literature and the media, “is part of the reason that program is known across the country,” Dillon says. His Cultural Literacy Project annually brings together educators from around Minnesota.

Timothy Lensmire, “a fantastic scholar in the field of writing,” is focusing his research on race and teaching pedagogy. His recent publications include Powerful Writing, Responsible Teaching (2000, Teachers College Press).

New scholars in the department include Cynthia Lewis, known nationally as an English education literacy researcher, and Lori Helman, whom Dillon says “will extend our expertise with reading and English-language learners.”

David O’Brien, who focuses on the literacy practices of adolescents, is researching the “new literacies,” the online reading and game-playing habits among young people who struggle to read more conventional material.

“Developing motivation to read means we have to expand our notion of reading materials and what reading looks like,” Dillon explains. “It’s not only sitting down with one of the classics. We have to hook kids on what they’re most interested in: teen magazines, Web sites, game materials. Those tasks are of interest to them. They give kids a purpose for reading.”

Among her own projects is Minnesota Reads, a collaborative effort with literacy professors at three other colleges and universities in Minnesota to study how best to teach literacy in the elementary through high school years. The three-year project was funded by a $1 million Bush Foundation Grant.

What is the college known for now in the literacy and reading-research field? “The preparation of teachers is very good here,” says Dillon. “We have leading scholars doing nationally known reading research. Then they walk into the classroom and directly teach teachers about that research. Our students are in the unique position of being taught by some of the leading researchers in the country.”