Marc Goodrich selected for Rebecca L. Sandak Young Investigator Award

18 Feb 2021     By Kelcey Buck

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders assistant professor Marc Goodrich was selected as the recipient of the Rebecca L. Sandak Young Investigator Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. 

The award recognizes a gifted young reading researcher who shows outstanding promise and dedication to the field. 

“It is a great honor to be selected for this award,” Goodrich said. “I highly value my membership and participation in SSSR. It represents the highest quality research being conducted around the world to understand reading and improve reading achievement for all individuals, across the lifespan. It is really humbling that the society considered my work for this award.” 

Goodrich leads the Bilingual Early Language and Literacy (BELL) Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where his current research focuses on methods of identifying risk for reading difficulty among young Spanish-speaking children. Recently, he conducted a pilot study with Lisa Fitton from the University of South Carolina measuring Spanish and English early language skills comprehensively to evaluate which aspects of early language development most reliably predict risk for reading difficulty. 

In addition, Goodrich, associate professor Michael Hebert and assistant professor Jessica Namkung have worked to characterize how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the way teachers provide instruction in academic skills such as reading, writing and mathematics to children in elementary school across the U.S. 

The Rebecca Sandak Award was established in 2008 to honor the memory of Rebecca Sandak, who died before her research goals and ideas were fully realized. She became interested in the scientific study of reading as an undergraduate student at Binghamton University, and continued through graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. While earning her doctorate in cognitive psychology with a concentration in cognitive neuroscience, Sandak became committed to applying cognitive neuroscience techniques to the study of reading, and helped to develop an early fMRI study of reading disability in children. She continued her research as a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut, until her death in 2006. 

Learn more about the Rebecca Sandak Award by visiting the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading website. Visit the BELL Lab website to learn more about Goodrich’s research.