E. Wendy Saul, Ph.D.E. Wendy Saul serves as the Allen B. and Helen S. Shopmaker Endowed Professor of Education and International Studies in Collaboration with Springboard to Learning. As an UMSL faculty member she teaches graduate courses in teacher research and literacy. To support Springboard she works with the organization's artists and subject specialists as well as the Board of Directors to support curricular innovation and to foster staff development. Before coming to UMSL, Dr. Saul was a Professor of Education at UMBC (the University of Maryland Baltimore County). Years ago she taught Jr. High school on New York City's Lower East Side and worked as Education Director for the Grand Street Settlement House.
For the past 20 years Dr. Saul has served as PI for various NSF grants that explore the relationship between science and literacy. Her newest grant is entitled "Science Literacy through Science Journalism" (in collaboration with UMSL learning sciences scholar Joseph Polman, science journalist Alan Newman and HS. teacher Cathy Farrar). The goal of the project is to explore if and how the teaching of science journalism using an apprenticeship model, relevant and reliable data sources and science-specific writing standards, improves high school students' science-related public literacy. Students in the project function as reporters in a newsroom--"pitching", researching, writing and publishing original news stories. A second group of students, based at the Saint Louis Science Center, under the "Youth Exploring Science" program, will serve as editors, providing feedback on the content and accepting articles for publication in online and in print venues.
