Thursday, October 8, 2009

Timothy Shanahan, Ph.D.
Professor Urban Education, University of Illinois at Chicago
Director of the Center for Literacy

Timothy Shanahan is Professor of Urban Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he is Director of the University of Illinois Chicago Center for Literacy. Timothy Shanahan is former director of reading for the Chicago Public Schools, serving 437,000 children, and has authored or edited more than 150 publications including the books, Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners, Teachers Thinking—Teachers Knowing, Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Literacy, Reading and Writing Together, and Understanding Research in Reading and Writing. Professor Shanahan's research emphasizes reading-writing relationships, reading assessment, and improving reading achievement, and he is frequently quoted in media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Newsweek, and has appeared on Bloomberg News and the O'Reilly Factor.

Professor Shanahan is immediate past president of the International Reading Association. In 2006, Timothy Shanahan was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Literacy. Shanahan is on the Advisory Boards of the National Center for Family Literacy and Reach Out and Read, and has served on the National Reading Panel, a group convened by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the request of Congress to evaluate research on successful methods of teaching reading. He has chaired two other federal research review panels: one on the literacy learning of language in minority children and one on preschool and family literacy. He is author of Elements of Literacy: Fluency (Harcourt an instructional program for Grades 1-3, Treasures, a K–6 core reading program, and the AMP Reading System, an intervention program for striving readers in Grades 6-8.

Professor Timothy Shanahan received the Albert J. Harris Award for outstanding research on reading disability from the International Reading Association (IRA), the Milton D. Jacobson Readability Research Award also from IRA, the Amoco Award for Outstanding Teaching and the University of Delaware Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement.

Timothy Shanahan received his Ph.D. at the University of Delaware in 1980. His research and development projects have attracted approximately $5 million in funding from government agencies and the philanthropic community. He was inducted to the Reading Hall of Fame in 2007 and is a former first-grade teacher.

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