Richard Sparks, Ph.D.
Dr. Sparks is a professor of education at the College of Mount St. Joseph. Dr. Sparks earned his doctorate at the University of Cincinnati. His research interests include foreign language learning, reading and language disabilities, and hyperlexia. Dr. Sparks has published extensively in both foreign language and learning disability journals. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Learning Disabilities and Annals of Dyslexia. Recently, he received the Established Scholar Award from the College of Mount St. Joseph.
Beth O'Brien, Ph.D.
A cognitive psychologist by training, Beth O’Brien is interested in looking at the visual,
orthographic and cognitive processes in reading development and in developmental dyslexia. She received her doctorate from Tulane University in the Department of Psychology, where she began her work on the visual processes involved in skilled and unskilled reading. She was awarded a three-year postdoctoral fellowship to continue her research at the University of Minnesota Laboratory for Low-Vision Research. She has presented papers at conferences of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, International Dyslexia Association and the American Educational Research Association, and she has published her work in VisionResearch and Journal of Research in Reading.
Stephanie Gottwald, M.A.
Stephanie Gottwald is the research coordinator of the Center for Reading and Language Research and the lead trainer for RAVE-O, a systematic reading fluency and comprehension intervention curriculum. She received her master’s degree in general linguistics from Boston College in the Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages, and she was awarded a Fullbright Fellowship in Germany. She has published her research in Language and Second Language Research.