Collaborators
Maureen Lovett, Director of the Learning Disabilities Research Program (LDRP), has collaborated with many internationally-renowned researchers over the past 30 years. The research of Dr. Lovett and her colleagues, Dr. Robin Morris at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA, and Dr. Mary Ann Wolf at Tufts University in Boston, MA, was funded by the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development from 1996 to 2006. Currently Dr Lovett, Dr. Morris, along with their colleagues Dr. Rose Sevcik (also at Georgia State University) and Dr. Jan Frijters (at Brock University in St. Catherine’s, ON), are funded by the Institute of Education Sciences branch of the U.S. Department of Education.
Robin Morris, PhD,is the Vice President for Research and Regents Professor of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University. He also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education in the College of Education, and was the founding Director of the Regents Center for Learning Disorders at Georgia State University, which serves high school and college students admitted to 16 colleges and universities in the Board of Regents System. Dr. Morris has focused his scholarly 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. In particular, it has focused on approaches to reading instruction that work best for different kinds of children and adults having difficulty in learning how to read. His research frequently has been multi-site, with current studies being conducted in the Atlanta and along with researchers in Boston, Toronto; Athens, Ga.; Philadelphia; and in the Philippines. He has recently served on the board of the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL).
Rose A. Sevcik, PhD,is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Georgia State University and a faculty member in Georgia State’s Center for Atypical Development and Learning. She brings over two decades of experience working with students with a range of disabilities, their families, and schools. Her scholarly and research interests center on the development of symbolic processes, specifically oral and written language development. Her research has focused on the development and implementation of language and reading interventions for children and youth identified with, or at risk for, disabilities with special focus on teachers’ implementation of reading programs. She has extensive experience in coordinating multi-site research projects including ongoing collaborative work in Hong Kong, Korea, and South Africa.
Jan C. Frijters, PhD,is a Developmental Psychologist and Assistant Professor at Brock University. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from The University of Guelph. His primary research areas are the study of reading, reading disability and the development of motivation for reading throughout childhood. He has interests in the application of statistical models to change over time, especially for techniques that help sort out how developmental processes unfold within specific learning contexts. Much of this work is carried out as part of the Learning Disabilities Research Program at SickKids in Toronto, Canada where he is investigating the working relationship between remedial teacher and student, attributions of success and failure for reading experiences, and motivation for specific academic tasks.
Maryanne Wolf, EdD, is the Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University, where she is an Associate Professor of Child Development. She is the editor of Dyslexia, Fluency and the Brain, and has also written/designed three empirically proven instructional programs on thinking skills for middle school students, on reading and writing for elementary school students, and on linguistic awareness for emergent readers. Dr. Wolf has published hundreds of articles on reading and learning disabilities.
Donald Compton, PhD, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, is known for his modeling of individual differences in reading development and his RD intervention research.
William Pelham Jr. PhD, is the Director of the Center for Children and Families (CCF) at UB, an interdisciplinary center with faculty and student involvement from the Departments of Psychology, Psychiatry, Pediatrics, School Psychology and Pharmacy. His area of interest is Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents. He has studied many facets of ADHD, including: (1) the nature of cognitive deficit, (2) peer relationships, (3) diagnosis, (4) pharmacological, psychosocial, and combined treatments, (5) motivation and persistence, (6) family factors (e.g., parental alcohol problems), (7) service delivery, and (8) outcome. His Summer Treatment Program has also been employed in multiple clinical trials at the NIMH, NIDA, and SAMHSA.