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Management Structure

The Center Director, Associate Director, Chief Operating Officer, and the Senior Principal Investigators for the Center's projects make up a management and operating board of directors for the Center. The Center Director and Associate Director are also active principal investigators on Center projects.

• Center Director

  Sylvia Linan-Thompson, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Special Education, a fellow in the Mollie V. Davis Professorship in Learning Disabilities, Director of the Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts, and Associate Director and Co-Principal Investigator of the Research and Development Center for English Language Learners. She is the author of books, book chapters and articles on topics related to interventions for students with reading difficulties, reading instruction for English language learners, response to instruction, and Spanish literacy instruction.

• Associate Director

  Greg Roberts, Ph.D. is Associate Director of the VGC, Principal Investigator and Director of the Special Education Strand of the Center on Instruction, and Principal Investigator for Dissemination Core of the Texas Center on Learning Disabilities. Dr. Roberts has an undergraduate degree in special education and is trained as an educational psychologist, with expertise in quantitative methods, measurement, and program evaluation. He has provided external evaluation for projects in education, health care, and industry. Recent projects have included the state-level evaluations of the Hawaii Reading First Initiative, the Oregon Reading First Initiative, and the Alabama Reading First Initiative. He was the evaluator also of PiHanaNaMamo, an OSEP-funded project supporting native Hawaiian high school students in special education. He has published in tier 1 multidisciplinary journals and contributed chapters to books on reading instruction, measurement, and response to intervention.

• Chief Operating Officer

  Stacy McCracken, MBA is an Assistant Director of VGC and serves as the Center’s Chief Operating Officer.  Prior to joining the Vaughn Gross Center, she spent 18 years holding a variety of management and leadership positions at Freescale Semiconductor and Delphi Chassis. Ms. McCracken earned a bachelor’s of science in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University and a master’s of business administration (MBA) from Auburn University.  She currently sits on the advisory board for Auburn University’s MBA program.

• Senior Principal Investigators

• Diane Pedrotty Bryant, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Special Education and a fellow in the Mollie V. Davis Professorship in Learning Disabilities. She is the Principal Investigator for the Special Education 3-Tier Mathematics Assessment and Intervention model funded by the Texas Education Agency, for an Institute for Education Sciences grant investigating the effects of an RTI early mathematics model on the mathematics performance of students with math difficulties, and for a subcontract with RMC on SBRR and SBRI projects. The author of numerous articles on instructional strategies for students with learning disabilities, Dr. Bryant is also the co-author of several textbooks and tests.

• Pam Bell Morris, Ph.D. directs the Building Capacity for Response to Intervention (RTI) project and the Spotlight 3-TIer Reading Model project, both funded by the Texas Education Agency. She also serves as Co-Principal Investigator on the National Reading First project, a collaboration between the VGC and the National Center for Reading First Technical Assistance (NCRFTA), coordinated by RMC Research Corporation and funded by the Department of Education. Her academic background is in communication disorders, specifically education of students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Her areas of expertise include translating research findings into professional development to improve classroom practices, and providing technical assistance for school improvement; her area of interest is in special education using technology to promote the integration of research-based reading with classroom reading instruction and intervention.

• Sharon Vaughn, Ph.D. is the H. E. Hartfelder/Southland Corp. Regents Chair in Human Development. She is the author of numerous books and research articles that address the reading and social outcomes of students with learning difficulties. She is currently the Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on several Institute for Education Science and Office of Special Education Programs research grants investigating effective interventions for students with reading difficulties and students who are English language learners. She is also Principal Investigator on a NICHD grant examining response to intervention in younger and older readers.

• Thea Woodruff, Ph.D. directs the professional development and technical assistance teams for the Vaughn Gross Center’s Texas Reading First project. Within the project, teams work on online professional development, the Higher Education Collaborative, and providing training and support to Texas schools receiving Reading First funds.