Wyoming First Lady Carol Mead spoke Friday at a public literacy forum that took place in the Albany County Library.
The goal of the forum was to discuss the progress of the Literacy Research Center and Clinic as well as to foster broad conversations among community members interested in literacy.
At the forum, Mead offered comments about her interest in literacy as well as comments from a few faculty members in the UW College of Education who have been actively engaged in moving forward the development of the Literacy Research Center and Clinic.
Mead has been a key supporter in this project and voiced her personal interest in literacy.
“As First Lady you get a lot of opportunities to look at different issues that affect citizens of the state. For me, early on, I knew I wanted to do something involving working with children,” Mead said. “I broadly define my initiative as children’s issues, but I spent the balance of that time working on literacy.”
The focus of the Literacy Research Center and Clinic is literacy for life, according to Kay Persichitte, UW College of Education Dean.
“The idea of literacy for life has become more and more important. It began with really thinking about literacy development and now we understand that literacy from birth through our entire adulthood is different now than it was even a decade ago and certainly when any of us were students,” Persichitte said as she opened up the forum Friday.
The Literacy Research Center and Clinic will be located in the UW College of Education Annex Building on campus. Renovations for the building total $3.8 million and will be funded by private donations and state appropriations.
The concept behind the literacy center includes an emphasis on technology advancements so that literacy initiatives can take place statewide without having to travel. Members plan to use programs like Google Chat or Skype in order to communicate with those that live further away.
George Kamberelis and Victoria Gillis, the two Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chairs in Literacy Education, also spoke at the event.
Kamberelis and Gillis are working on a number of projects involving graduate to elementary tutoring at the Teton Literacy Center and Child Development Center. The pair has also been involved with Systems of Education in Jackson, Wyo.
Construction and renovations are still taking place, but as of now, the Literacy Research Center and Clinic is planned to open in the fall of 2013.
