Dean Elizabeth Moje receives the 2022 Oscar S. Causey Award from the Literacy Research Association 

Each fall, the Literacy Research Association (LRA) awards the Oscar S. Causey Award for outstanding contributions to reading research. Dean Elizabeth Moje is the 2022 recipient, recognized for her significant and original research in literacy. 

“Elizabeth has been one of literacy’s leading scholars in two areas: disciplinary literacy and scientific literacy,” writes Ann L. Brown Distinguished University Professor Emerita Annemarie Palincsar, who nominated Moje for the award. “Drawing from her own experiences as a high-school teacher of history, biology, and drama, she has argued that educators can make radical change in student learning and well-being if the focus of the work of teaching is to educate youth to navigate the multiple literacy contexts in which they live, learn, and work. In her scholarship, disciplinary literacy instruction puts the process of inquiry at its center and attends to value, purpose, affect, emotion, imagination, social interaction, and the learning and challenging of cultural conventions.”

Moje is the editor or co-editor of six books, the author of 45 book chapters (many of which have been co-authored with graduate students  whom she has successfully mentored), and the author or co-author of 50 peer-refereed journal articles. Purposeful about writing for diverse audiences, she has published a number of articles written for educators and policy makers, and also writes for disciplinary communities, especially at the intersection of literacy and science, which is the focus of much of her scholarship. Her research has been funded by highly competitive grants from numerous sources including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, James L. Knight Foundation, W.T. Grant Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Spencer Foundation. 

Dr. Oscar S. Causey, for whom the award is named, was the founder of the National Reading Conference and served many years as Chair of the Executive Committee. First presented in 1967, the award is given annually to recognize outstanding contributions to literacy research.