Sucess Stories

New Faces in Texas Adult Education
and Family Literacy Leadership

Texas LEARNS has added to its staff a new State Even Start and Family Literacy Coordinator, Beth Thompson. Beth is well known in our state as a successful family literacy program instructional leader, having led the Even Start/Project LEARN staff at Lamar Consolidated ISD in Rosenberg, TX for nine years. Beth supports local programs in delivering the highest quality family literacy services possible. She, with the assistance of Texas State Family Literacy Resource Center and TCALL, identifies Even Start training needs and creates solutions to those training needs. She leads inquiries for program improvement based on state outcomes. The first example of this is the creation of a task force for the revision of Early Childhood Indicators of Program Quality. The goal of that task force is to complete its work in the 2004-2005 school year. Beth also develops policy and procedures manuals and evaluates program effectiveness. Additionally, she provides administrative assistance in implementing and managing adult education and family literacy programs in accordance with state and federal regulations, works with and speaks to the community and professional groups to coordinate, improve, and stimulate interest in the program, and consults with public and private agencies involved in the program to resolve problems. She determines trends and resolves operational problems, prepares administrative reports, studies and specialized research projects. Beth's husband, Jim, is an estimator for a Houston road building firm. They have a son, 12 and a daughter, 11. Both attend Beck Junior High School in Katy, TX where they have lived since 1993.

Welcome Aboard!

TCALL is proud to announce that Dr. Dominique T. Chlup is the new Director of TCALL and the Principal Investigator for the Adult Literacy Clearinghouse Project. Along with her administrative and research duties at TCALL, she is an Assistant Professor in the Adult Education program area in the Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University.

Dr. Chlup received her Doctorate in Education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She completed her degree in the Learning and Teaching Area with an interest in adult education, literacy development and the history of women's correctional education. She served as a 2003-2004 Fellow at the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL), where she assisted with the research project Establishing an Evidence-based Adult Education System. Trained as a historian, she is particularly passionate about studying the history of education and how its legacy informs contemporary policies and practices. As such, her dissertation research focused on the historical foundations of adult education within the social context of one of the first women's prisons, which is still in operation today. Dr. Chlup's historical research examined the origins, development, and significance of the educational programs and practices developed for women and girls at the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at Framingham from 1930 to 1960.

Dr. Chlup first became interested in the field of education when she volunteered to teach literature and creative writing at a women's jail in Valhalla, New York. Recognizing that her students needed basic literacy skills, she received training not only as a reading specialist but she was also trained in the assessment, evaluation, and diagnosis of learning disabilities. She has used this training in both her research and her teaching practice. She has taught college students in New York City and at Harvard University, worked with young children and adolescents enrolled in both private and public school settings, worked with adjudicated juveniles and the adult prison population, and for the past four years while enrolled as a graduate student, she worked as a Reading Consultant and Pscyhoeducational Diagnostician for the Learning Lab@Lesley University.

As a scholar, in addition to her research interests in adult education and literacy development, she is interested in the history of women's and girl's education, gender history and women's studies, teacher education preparation, criminal justice/legal history, and professionalizing the field of correctional education, and studying English as a Second Language (ESL) literacy acquisition.

In addition to her doctorate, she also holds a Masters in Education from Harvard University, a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing from Sarah Lawrence, and Bachelor of Arts degrees in both English and History from Columbia University.