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IDEA Faculty and Staff |
Dr. Thomas Beck is a research associate at the University of Oregon. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of early literacy, vocabulary instruction, and instructional design. Currently, Dr. Thomas Beck co-directs the Oregon Reading First Center, a federally funded center that provides technical support in the area of early literacy to 50 elementary schools throughout the state of Oregon, with the objective of having all children reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade. Dr. Thomas Beck spent five years working as an implementation manager/project director for the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI), supporting schoolwide Direct Instruction implementations in schools throughout the United States. Dr. Thomas Beck is a contributing author of Early Reading Intervention (ERI), a commercially published kindergarten reading intervention program and contributed to the design of a kindergarten and first grade core reading program, Voyager Universal Literacy System. She has worked as a curriculum specialist in language arts for Springfield School District in Oregon and has taught elementary and secondary special education in schools in Wisconsin and Illinois.