TextProject Board Members

CEO/ President

Elfrieda “Freddy” Hiebert (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) has had a long career as a literacy educator, first as a teacher’s aide and teacher of primary-level students in California and, subsequently, as a teacher educator and researcher at the universities of Kentucky, Colorado-Boulder, Michigan, and California-Berkeley. Her research, which addresses how fluency, vocabulary, and knowledge can be fostered through appropriate texts, has been published in numerous scholarly journals and books. Through documents such as Becoming a Nation of Readers (Center for the Study of Reading, 1985) and Every Child a Reader (Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement, 1999), she has contributed to making research accessible to educators. Hiebert’s contributions to research and practice have been recognized through awards such as the American Educational Research Association’s Research to Practice award (2013).

Dr. Hiebert is also an author for Savvas Learning Company on the QuickReads, myView Literacy, and myPerspectives solutions for grades K-12.

View Dr. Hiebert’s CV here: Elfrieda Hiebert CV  (pdf)

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Francie Alexander is an industry leader in the fields of Early Childhood Education, Literacy, and Intensive Intervention for striving reading and math students. Francie provides inspirational and informative leadership on topics from early and adolescent learning to brain development and its influence on childhood and teenage learning. She works closely to listen to and learn from key school districts across the U.S. in order to lead Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s efficacy efforts.

Francie currently serves as the Chief Research Officer at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She is also on the Board of Directors for Child 360, formerly Los Angeles Universal Pre-K (LAUP), and TextProject. She served for almost 10 years on the PBS Next Generation Media Advisory Board. She was previously chief academic officer for Scholastic.

She has been a frequent guest on NBC’s TODAY Show, has written columns for The New York Post, and was “The Book Nanny” for Los Angeles Family Magazine. Additionally, Francie has authored more than 50 books for children, including new Curious George Readers.

Francie is a former member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, widely known as “The Nation’s Report Card.” Prior to her time at HMH, Francie held key positions in both state and federal education agencies, including serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education’s research branch, where she led Department-sponsored standards efforts and campaigns in support of libraries and the arts. She is in the California Reading Hall of Fame and was associate superintendent for the state.

Francie’s work is grounded in the classroom, as she has taught students from kindergarten to college. She holds a CA Life Teaching Credential from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Master of Arts degree in education and CA Administrative Credential from California Lutheran University, where she was a lecturer.

CFO/ Secretary

Charles Fisher (Ph.D., University of Toronto) has conducted and managed educational research for more than four decades. As Director of Research and Development (Far West Laboratory), Director of the Center for Research on Teaching and Learning (University of Northern Colorado), and Senior Research Scientist (University of Michigan) his work examined how teachers and learners carry out literacy and science tasks in both formal and informal education settings. He has written or edited four books and published three dozen articles on educational topics including Academic Learning Time, classroom task structures, and the impact of technology in elementary school classrooms.

Director

Gina Cervetti (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an associate professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at University of Michigan’s School of Education. The focus of Gina’s work is on science as a context for language and literacy development and, in particular, on how students can build knowledge and language to support future reading through their experiences in content-rich, inquiry-based science instruction. Gina is also involved in work on academic discourse and vocabulary acquisition in science and on how curriculum materials can best support teachers’ practice and teacher learning. Following her doctoral work in educational psychology at Michigan State University, Gina worked for several years as a postdoctoral scholar and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, on the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading (Seeds/Roots) program. Gina led the literacy team in its conceptualization and development of integrated science-literacy curriculum units for students in grades 2-5.

For more information about Dr. Cervetti please visit her faculty website at UMICH.

Kristin Conradi Smith is an Associate Professor of Reading Education at the College of William and Mary’s School of Education. Her research falls into three strands: (1) better understanding children who struggle with reading; (2) the role of texts in the classroom; and (3) issues related to reading motivation. She has published more than twenty articles and book chapters in journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, Educational Psychology Review, the Reading Teacher, and Reading and Writing Quarterly.

Prior to earning her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2011, she was an elementary school teacher and coach in Camden, New Jersey and Richmond, Virginia.

For more information about Dr. Conradi Smith at her faculty website at William and Mary’s School of Education.

Director

P. David Pearson (Ph. D., University of Minnesota) is the co-principal investigator for Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading and a faculty member in the Language and Literacy Program at University of California, Berkeley, where he served as Dean from 2001-2010. His research focuses on reading instruction and assessment. Before joining UCB in 2001, David was the John A. Hannah distinguished professor of education at Michigan State and co-director of the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA). He has written and co-edited numerous books and articles, including the Handbook of Reading Research. David has also been presented with numerous prestigious awards. Most recently David was awarded with the AERA Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award (2010).

For more information about Dr. Pearson please visit his faculty website at UCB.

Director

Judith Scott (Ph.D. University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at University of California, Santa Cruz where she has served on the Executive Committee as both a Director of Doctoral Programs and a Director of Undergraduate Programs. Judy is also the director of the Vocabulary Innovations in Education (VINE) Consortium at UCSC.

Judy is the PI of three IES grants (R305A090550; R305G060140; R305A080596), an Improving Teacher Quality grant (ITQ-11-804) and the co-PI of the Central California Writing Project. Her scholarship on vocabulary acquisition and assessment is internationally recognized with extensive publications in sources such as Reading Research Quarterly, Elementary School Journal, and the Handbook of Reading Research Volume III. She also provides professional development for teachers, bridging research to classroom practice in her writings and workshops. Judy won the 2006 John Chorlton Manning Award from the International Reading Association for her outstanding work with public schools.

For more information about Dr. Scott please visit her faculty website at UCSC.