Biographical Information



I did my graduate work at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, under the mentorship of Jerome L. Myers. My early research career was focused on the representation and retrieval of information in semantic memory. Those research interests morphed rather naturally into an interest in research on text representation and text processing. Much of my research during the 1980's and 1990's was concerned with the representation, comprehension and memory for expository text. This work focused on processing of text structure, particularly at the level of the identification and organization of text topics. An offshoot of that work is my research on signaling devices. Signals are writing devices that authors use to direct readers' processing of important content and text organization. I have been especially interested in signals to text organization.



Most recently, I have begun to conduct research in an entirely new area: science education in elementary schools. With my colleagues, Elizabeth Lorch and William Calderhead, I have spent the last couple of years in fourth-grade classrooms, studying interventions to teach students the logic of simple science experiments. This research is funded by a grant from the Institute for Education Sciences.

My involvement with research in elementary education has led to an association with the Children at Risk Research Cluster at the University of Kentucky. This initiative is comprised of a group of psychologists and sociologists at UK who do research on various topics related to the theme "children at risk."



Outside of my academic pursuits, my time is occupied by my family and my dogs. My daughter, Sarah, is a junior at the College of Wooster. My daughter, Rachel, is a sophomore at Henry Clay High School. Their athletic and musical interests have pretty much controlled my wife's and my life for the past decade or more. My two golden retrievers, Katie and Patrick, are the youngsters in the household these days.



When I have some personal time, I enjoy reading (favorite author: Wallace Stegner), listening to music (classical, jazz, blue/newgrass, and the groups of my youth), travel and food.