ESU Backup Insider

Maureen McLaughlin, Ed.D., professor and chair of the East Stroudsburg University Pennsylvania (ESU) department of reading, has been elected president of the International Reading Association (IRA) for the 2013 – 2014 term. She will officially take office at the conclusion of the IRA’s upcoming convention in San Antonio, Texas on April 22, 2013.

Dr. McLaughlin was named the 2010 recipient of the IRA Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading Award, which honors an outstanding university professor who is engaged in teacher preparation in reading at the graduate level. She was previously elected to serve on the IRA Board of Directors from 2005 to 2008, extending her commitment to promote this nonprofit, global network of individuals and institutions committed to worldwide literacy. More than 75,000 members strong, the IRA supports literacy professionals through a wide range of resources, advocacy efforts, volunteerism, and professional development activities.

McLaughlin has chaired several IRA committees, including: bylaws and assessment and served as a volunteer professor in Estonia for five years for IRA’s Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking Project. In that program, IRA selected 30 professors from throughout the United States and Canada to teach about literacy developments to teachers in Eastern Europe. All of the European countries involved had been dominated by communism for more than 30 years. She has also served as a journal and proposal reviewer, and is a frequent presenter at the association’s annual conference, World Congress, European Reading, and state, regional and provincial conferences. She will keynote literacy conferences in Australia, New Zealand, and Kenya this summer.

McLaughlin has been a professor in the ESU Department of Reading for more than 20 years and has served as chair for the past five years. During her tenure she has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in her field and developed an endorsement in literacy coaching and a program for reading supervisor certification in collaboration with faculty colleagues. In addition, McLaughlin is an educational consultant at the local, state, regional, national, and international levels.

She earned her doctorate at Boston University in reading and language development, and received her bachelor of arts and her master of science degrees from Marywood University. Prior to her tenure at ESU, she spent fifteen years as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, and department chair in the Dunmore School District, Dunmore, Pa.

McLaughlin is a prolific writer, who has authored numerous articles, chapters, and books throughout her distinguished career. Her latest publications, which focus on the Common Core State Standards, include The Common Core: Teaching K – 5 Students to Meet the Reading Standards and The Common Core: Teaching Students in Grades 6 – 12 to Meet the Reading Standards. She is also the author of two of the of the IRA’s best-selling titles, Guided Comprehension in the Primary Grades and Guided Comprehension in Grades 3-8, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning in an Age of Multiple Literacies, and “Reading Comprehension: What Every Teacher Needs to Know” an invited article in The Reading Teacher, the premiere literacy journal.

For more information about ESU’s online or on-campus graduate reading programs or certification options, contact McLaughlin at 570-422-3412 or mmclaughlin@.esu.edu. For details about the International Reading Association, visit www.reading.org.