MURFREESBORO — Now a
few months into his new position as chair of the MTSU’s Dyslexic Studies
department, Dr. Timothy Odegard has eagerly embraced his role “to provide a
guiding light” for the Tennessee Center for Dyslexia on North Baird Lane.
In
November, Odegard was named the Katherine Davis Murfree Chair of Excellence in
Dyslexic Studies, a professorship created in 1989 that is part of the MTSU
College of Education. The Center for Dyslexia was established in 1993 to
develop workshops and student assessments for K-12 teachers and support MTSU
graduate programs in related fields of study.
The
chair’s purpose is to enhance the skills of teachers, school psychologists, and
parents to more effectively identify and assist dyslexic students. The position
is also tasked with contributing to research about how best to address this
learning disability in which some people have extreme difficulty learning to
read and spell.
“One of
the goals that I have been working with Dean (Lana) Seivers and others to
explore is our ability as a center to go back to our roots a bit and to start
offering some very structured, more formal and intensive teacher trainings,”
Odegard said, adding that such training would occur on and off campus and could
include virtual training opportunities as well.
He will
work closely with Dr. Jim Herman, director of the Center for Dyslexia, in
establishing partnerships with surrounding school districts. The center could
then eventually expand those efforts across the state to help and support
teachers and educators “who are in our schools and interacting with these
children and they’re feeling overwhelmed,” he said.
That
likely means changing reading and literacy instruction within classrooms to
meet the needs of dyslexic students. As a developmental cognitive psychologist,
Odegard has pursued research that focuses on memory and language as well as
incorporating experimental methods and neuroimaging to understand the
development of these aspects of human cognition.
“Good,
solid reading intervention seems to be effective for a lot of kids,” he said,
noting that he hopes to expand his research in neuroimaging and intensive
instruction.
Odegard’s
research strives to identify factors that predict the response of individuals
with dyslexia to “intensive multisensory” reading instruction. He’s hoping to
do collaborative research at MTSU with other faculty who are also interested in
the topic or who may have had previous connections to the center and its
mission.
Odegard
completed the two-year dyslexia specialist training program at Texas Scottish
Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas, Texas. He also completed a supervised
practicum during his training where he provided multisensory reading
instruction in small group and one-on-one settings under the supervision of
qualified instructors at the hospital.
Odegard,
who regularly speaks across the nation on topics related to dyslexia, is a
Certified Academic Language Practitioner (CALP). He presented some of his
research at a recent literacy conference at MTSU based on his study of
neuroimaging in Texas.
“It’s an
emerging field of research,” he said. “The reality of reading and literacy and
developing these skills is that there’s a gene, brain, environment interaction
that we’re slowly unraveling across many labs in the country.”
Odegard
said a longer-term goal is to work toward fulfilling the Tennessee Center for
Dyslexia’s vision “to create information and become clearinghouse for reliable
information on dyslexia and related reading disabilities and how they relate to
literacy in general.”
The
center will be working with the MTSU Center for Educational Media to create and
make available short, topical videos that are teacher and parent friendly while
also seeking partnerships and collaborations with allied organizations to hold
or host events related to dyslexia.
For more
information about the Murfree Chair of Excellence or the Dyslexic Studies
courses, call 615-898-5642 or visit http://www.mtsu.edu/dyslstud/.
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