[349] New Director Takes Helm of MTSU's Nationally Known Dyslexia Center

March 15, 2011
CONTACT: Tom Tozer, 615-898-2919


NEW DIRECTOR TAKES HELM OF MTSU’s NATIONALLY KNOWN DYSLEXIA CENTER

MURFREESBORO—Dr. Regina Boulware-Gooden is the new director of the Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia on the MTSU campus. She replaces Dr. Diane J. Sawyer who retired from MTSU in May of 2010 after 20 years of service to the university.
Prior to coming to MTSU, Boulware-Gooden served for eight years as director of research at Neuhaus Education Center in Houston, Texas. While there she established a Master’s Reading Specialist program and master’s programs with both Stephen F. Austin State University and Southern Methodist University in partnership with Neuhaus. During a three-year hiatus from Neuhaus, she was director of the reading program at the University of St. Thomas, a liberal arts school in Houston.
“I met Diane Sawyer at some national meetings, and she asked me if I was interested in changing universities,” Boulware-Gooden said. “Diane is known throughout the country, and the center is well-known and respected.” The new director added that she had never been to Tennessee and decided to chart new territory.
Boulware-Gooden explained that one of the center’s primary jobs is to do assessment work with students who may have dyslexia. She said that according to the research approximately 20 to 25 percent of the students sitting in classrooms across the nation have dyslexia.
“A lot of kids are struggling. They don’t know why, and their parents don’t know why. And a lot of teachers aren’t trained in identifying dyslexia.”
The center staff assists with training MTSU’s school psychology students to identify dyslexia in the schools and graduate assistants in school psychology to assist with the testing.
“We want to streamline the testing procedures and report writing so that we can get students through the center faster,” Boulware-Gooden said. “We certainly are identifying [symptoms of dyslexia] more now.”
Dyslexia is a neurological disorder that affects the decoding of written text, Boulware-Gooden points out. It doesn’t involve comprehension. Students with dyslexia are unable to fully understand information from the printed page, but they can understand the spoken word.
“They know they are not performing up to their peers, so they start getting frustrated,” she said. “It hurts their self-esteem. Teachers are becoming more aware of it and are identifying it earlier.”
Boulware-Gooden wants to sponsor more workshops for teachers and parents. Parents need to ask questions, learn strategies and learn what role they can play in working with their children.
“The center also provides professional development for teachers to enhance their knowledge of evidence-based reading instruction,” she noted. “The center collaborates with other departments on campus to conduct research in the area of dyslexia to broaden our understanding of the disorder. The center staff also provides class presentations to inform students about dyslexia and other reading difficulties.”
Boulware-Gooden received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Oklahoma State University; her Master of Education degree from Oklahoma City University and her doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Texas A&M University.
The Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia is a unit in the College of Education.
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Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. Recently, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.