Julie Coiro, a professor of literacy education at the University of Rhode Island, was named by Stanford University among the top 2% of scientists in the world in the sixth version published on October 4, 2023.
This list is called the “Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators,” published by the Elsevier data repository.
Coiro teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in reading, digital literacy and research design, according to her biography on the URI’s website. She is one of the directors for URI’s Graduate Certificate in Digital Literacy program. Coiro also holds a Docent in Education at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, focusing on “teaching and learning in a digital environment.”
Coiro was not notified by Stanford following the honor, and the only way to know is if you follow Stanford’s top 2% of scientists list, she said. Coiro didn’t follow this list before this, and never thought she would make it on it.
“I actually didn’t know about it until one of my colleagues from Finland texted me to say that they announced it at their faculty meeting at the University of Tampere,” Coiro said.
To determine who got on this list, Stanford University reviews scholars’ digital scholarly pages and databases, Coiro said. Then they compute the amount of citations from a scholar’s work used in other academic work and the kind of impact it made within the field.
Coiro has earned many achievements throughout her career, one being the Wiley Top Cited Article in her field, published by Reading Research Quarterly. She won for 2020-2021 and 2021-2022.
The article titled ‘Toward a Multifaceted Heuristic of Digital Reading to Inform Assessment, Research, Practice and Policy,’ is about the growing concept of digital reading and how it can be used to make reading practice easier within research methods, according to the abstract.
According to her biography on URI’s website, she has also earned the Outstanding Scholarship Award in 2012, the Erwin Zolt Digital Literacy Game Changers Award in 2019, the Divergent Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research in 2022 and many more.
According to the Dean of Education Danielle Dennis, Coiro’s research has been used around the world. The article that won her the Wiley’s Top Cited award, has been cited over 2,300 times, Dennis said. Some of her research used by other scholars is about online reading comprehension strategy instruction and effective practices for technology integration.
Coiro also holds multiple degrees. She has a Bachelor of Science in special education, K-12, and a Ph.D in educational psychology from the University of Connecticut. She also holds a Master’s of Education in curriculum and instruction with reading focus from the University of Orleans.
Her motivation to get her degrees started as an undergraduate at UConn when she decided that she wanted to work with children with disabilities in the classroom.
“I have always wanted to be a teacher,” Coiro said. “In high school, I had several experiences working with summer camps and students with physical or learning disabilities.”
Following her time at UConn, she moved to New Orleans for her husband’s military career, and found that many students with learning disabilities had emotional difficulties that stemmed from their inability to read. This is when she decided to get her master’s while in New Orleans to help support her K-12 students.
Dennis discussed her excitement regarding Coiro’s most recent achievement. She mentioned that she has followed Coiro’s work for many years before she became dean of education at URI.
“Her scholarly and work is one of the reasons that I thought that this would be a great faculty to work with,” Dennis said.
Dennis also indicated her admiration for Coiro and how all of her work has helped teachers across the world.
“It is amazing that Coiro is dedicating her teaching time to prepare the next generation of educators,” she said.
Dennis also recommended anyone interested in becoming an educator themselves should learn from her. She considers Coiro one of the top educators in her field.
“Thank you to my colleagues at the University of Rhode Island, and other people that I have worked and written with,” Coiro said. “I clearly would not have been able to get this award without them.”
To learn more about Coiro and all of her achievements throughout her career, you can visit her biography located on the URI’s website under the Feinstein College of Education.