IRA Jeanne S. Chall Research Fellowship

"Adult Literacy and Citizenship:
Empowering Struggling Readers with Morphological Instruction and Civics"

Susan Gray
The City University of New York
New York, NY

Susan Gray is a reading specialist, speech language pathologist and Ph.D. Candidate in Speech Language Hearing Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. She earned an M.Ed. in Reading and Language at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she studied with Jeanne Chall and Carol Chomsky. After receiving an M.S. in Communication Disorders at Boston University, she worked at the Massachusetts General Hospital as a speech pathologist and a clinical supervisor at the MGH Institute of Health Professions. She has taught in public schools in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York and has a private practice in Hastings on Hudson, NY. She is now working with John Locke, Linnea Ehri and Valerie Shafer on her dissertation project, teaching vocabulary through Latin and Greek root word study to young adults who have dropped out of high school. By providing morphological instruction within the context of passages on the rights and responsibilities of citizens, Susan hopes to increase literacy skills while promoting civic engagement in GED students.