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The Reading Instruction, Support, and Education Center - Columbus State University

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College of Education and Health Professions

The Reading Instruction, Support, and Education Center

Formerly the Center for Assessment and Reading Education.

Since reading is the foundation for all learning, to improve a child's reading ability is to improve his or her overall academic achievement.

– Dr. Sallie Averitt Miller, Founder

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Center Operating Information (Spring 2022)

Location: Frank Brown Hall (COEHP), Room 1060 (first floor, former Ledger-Enquirer building)

Phone: 706-565-1427

Hours: Tuesday & Thursday, 10 AM – 4 PM

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Our Mission

Our mission is to encourage socially just reading education practices that recognize children‘s literacy strengths and needs, and differentiate instruction accordingly. We strive to support undergraduate and graduate students as they participate in their reading, language arts, and children‘s literature coursework, as well as in their lab experiences. CARE also supports faculty teaching these courses by offering resources and equipment to enrich their curricula; and will increase our engagement with local public schools through upcoming programs.

Resources

Who We Are

The College of Education‘s Reading Instruction, Support, and Education (RISE) Center is a teaching library for students, teachers, and faculty. The Center offers a collection of children‘s literature, as well as a variety of instructional, diagnostic, and reference resources for elementary reading instruction and assessment. The library offers books that facilitate interdisciplinary connections with language arts, science, math, and social studies. Resources are also available for faculty, teachers, and students in special education and those working with culturally and linguistically diverse learners.

The RISE center offers book fairs, training workshops and informative presentations for Teacher Education students and faculty, in-service cooperating teachers, and the communities.

The Center's resources have been secured through grants, partnerships, contributions by the College of Education, Department of Teacher Education, Leadership, and Counseling, and vendors (e.g. ETA Cuisenaire, Scholastic, McGraw-Hill).

Contact Us

Jennifer L. VanSlander, PhD, RISE Director
Assistant Professor of Literacy
Department of Teacher Education
rise@columbusstate.edu

Jessie Moore, Manager
Graduate Assistant
rise@columbusstate.edu

Our History

Dr. Sallie Miller established the RISE center as the Center for Assessment & Reading Education (CARE) in 1999. Under her direction, the Center provided teacher candidates and in-service teachers with extended opportunities for Service Learning. They learned about, applied reading assessment and intervention tools, and received training to offer effective diagnoses and appropriate interventions. Children in the community reading below grade level were the recipients of these services. Follow-up records and research documented participating children‘s reading improvement.

CARE also held book fairs, training workshops and informative presentations that involved Teacher Education students and faculty, in-service cooperating teachers, and the communities. The Center‘s resources have been secured through grants, partnerships, contributions by the College of Education, Department of Teacher Education, and selected vendors (e.g. ETA Cuisenaire, Scholastic, McGraw-Hill).

CARE received a generous donation of books from the estate of Dr. Jim Brewbaker, former educator and CSU faculty member. His legacy as a mentor and role model for educators continues through these texts. At the end of 2018, Dr. Pam Wetherington donated a collection of chapter books for young readers from her personal teaching library.

During the 2019-20 academic year, Dr. Mark McCarthy implemented a name change from CARE to RISE. This new name was intended to better acknowledge the student-centered stance of the Center, while also making assessment less prominent. While assessment is central to reading instruction and development, it is often associated with the larger educational trend of mass standardized testing. We do not endorse standardized tests, nor has research suggested that it in any way positively impacts reading development.

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