WCU Magazine Summer 2026

When Dr. Katie Solic teaches Foundations in Reading — a required class for undergraduate early grades education majors — she emphasizes that literacy is more than being able to read a book.

"One of the key ideas that I try to impart to my students is that literacy is power,” says Dr. Solic, director of Partners In Raising Inclusive Zealous Educators (PRIZE) and professor of literacy in the College of Education and Social Work. “We discuss both what a society at large and an individual person can access through acquiring the capacity to read. We consider that the ability to write down ideas and then decipher them in a new time and place means that we can transcend our individual circumstances. … We are offering a set of tools that can be employed in the service of seeking personal and collective freedom, liberation, and self-actualization.”

Dr. Solic is stepping down as director of PRIZE to become chair of the literacy department. Her commitment to educational inclusivity made her a natural choice for leading the PRIZE program. As the program’s first director, she helped to launch the initiative that encourages high school students to become teachers, answering a critical need. “What has been so energizing for me is that so many of the high school students I get to engage with are so passionate about it. They bring so much positivity and so much wonderful energy. To be able to open a door … for them toward a career path has been tremendously rewarding for me.”

Seeing literacy as a vehicle for social justice has been what Dr. Solic calls the “throughline” of her career, uniting her teaching and academic scholarship.

That focus began as an undergraduate studying psychology at the University of Notre Dame. “I was doing a project for a theology class about literacy as a moral right,” she recalls. The project connected her with the late Dr. G. Michael Pressley, a noted literacy scholar, who later invited her to join his research team. “It was his mentorship that led to my graduate studies,” Dr. Solic says.

He connected her with Dr. Richard Allington and Dr. Anne McGill- Franzen, professors at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. As a doctoral student on their research team, she worked on a longitudinal study that showed that kindergarten students from low-income families who were given books for summer reading outperformed others on standardized tests as third graders.

Dr. Solic reinforces the value of family access to books in her teaching. Students in sections of Foundations in Reading taught by Dr. Solic and her colleague, Associate Professor of Literacy Dr. Sarah Lightner, can choose running a family book fair as a community engagement project. With funding from the Justamere Foundation, they run book fairs at six community sites, including Chester County Intermediate Unit Head Start centers. “There’s nothing better” she says of watching families choose books.

Connecting with the community also was an integral part of the Community Immersive Semester for Educators (CISE), which Dr. Solic co-founded with Dr. Kathleen Riley, professor of literacy. CISE provides early grades preparation students the opportunity to work with schoolchildren and families in historically marginalized communities. The 15-credit program was offered in partnership with the Add B. Anderson School and the Cobbs Creek neighborhood in West Philadelphia. The program was offered from 2019-2023 and is currently on hiatus.

“It has been a tremendous experience for students to take their classes alongside the children and teachers in the school and to engage with the families and other invested members of the neighborhood,” she says.