Verizon Eminent Scholar Series Continues With Educator Lecture

1/21/03

DENTON — Robert Tierney, dean of the faculty of education at the University of British Columbia, will lecture at Texas Woman's University on Feb. 17 as part of the Verizon Eminent Scholar Series. His talk, titled "When We Fail Students," will take place in the Multipurpose Classroom Laboratory Building (MCL) auditorium at 6 p.m. The program is free.

Tierney came to the United States in the early 1970s from Australia, where he grew up, attended universities and worked as a classroom teacher in a demonstration school at Sydney University. He continued his studies in the United States and completed his master's degree and doctorate at the University of Georgia.

For the past 25 years, teaching and learning — especially teacher education related to literacy development — have been the focus of his professional activities. He is a past president of the National Reading Conference, past chair of the Research Assembly for the National Council for Teachers of English and past editor of the Reading Research Quarterly. He has served on several panels for the U.S. Office of Education, has worked closely with the Children's Television Network with the development of Ghostwriter and has been involved in several long-term studies examining the impact of technology on teaching and learning.

Funding from Verizon enables the TWU Department of Reading to invite scholars representing a wide range of early literacy expertise to speak to teachers who are part of the Verizon Early Literacy Project, as well as other graduate and undergraduate students, faculty and community educators.

In addition to the Eminent Scholars Series, Verizon also funds a program between TWU and local school districts to train classroom literacy facilitators who then train classroom teachers in their districts. The project provides kindergarten through second grade teachers with knowledge and skills that enable them to maximize the literacy potential of every child in their classrooms.

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For Further Information Contact:

Roy Kron
Director of News and Information
Tel: (940) 898-3456
e-mail: rkron@twu.edu