URI Professor Named Among Top 2% Of Scientists In The World: Stanford

KINGSTON, RI — A literacy education professor at the University of Rhode Island was named to Stanford University's rankings of the top 2 percent of scientists in the world.

Professor Julie Coiro earned a coveted spot on the list, which identifies the world's leading researchers, who are making significant impacts in their respective fields.

Coiro conducts research in online reading comprehension, collaborative inquiry, and the design of digital assessment spaces, as well as effective practices for digital inquiry, technology integration, and professional learning, university officials said.

She is the director of URI’s graduate certificate program in digital literacy and has worked closely with over 1,000 educators from around the world to support their understanding of digital inquiry at URI’s Summer Institute in Digital Literacy for the past 11 years. Coiro also has a docent in Education position at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland with a focus on teaching and learning in digital environments.

She has received several awards for her work, including the Early Career Achievement Award (2011) from the Literacy Research Association; the Early Career Faculty Research Award in Social Science, Arts, and Humanities (2011) and the Outstanding Scholarship Award (2012) from the University of Rhode Island; the Erwin Zolt Digital Literacy Game Changers Award (2019) from the International Literacy Association; and the Divergent Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research (2022) from the Initiative for 21st Century Literacies Research.

"Dr. Coiro's cutting-edge literacy research is widely regarded, and this latest acknowledgement cements her as a top scholar in her field," URI College of Education Dean Danielle Dennis said. "Her work has consistently and convincingly made sense of how we understand online reading comprehension."

Dennis added that because of Coiro’s expertise in digital reading and comprehension, she was invited to serve on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Framework Development Panel. Often referred to as The nation’s report card, NAEP is a large-scale assessment administered by the National Center for Education Statistics.

"As a member of the panel, Julie contributed to the blueprint of content assessed, and determined how to measure skills and student achievement," Dennis said.

The ranking formula and full list of scientist rankings can be found here.

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