Patricia Alexander

From 1981 to 1995, Prof. Alexander held a joint appointment in the Departments of Educational Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University. During her tenure, Dr. Alexander was made a Distinguished Research Fellow and served as the Chair of the University Faculty Senate, the primary governance body for the University's 2500 faculty members. She joined the faculty at the University of Maryland in 1995 and presently oversees the departmental specialization in Educational Psychology.

Her research addresses such topics as learning, individual differences, and the interaction of knowledge, interest, and strategic processing. Recent publications have focused on the nature of academic development, particularly as it relates to domain-specific learning and to learning from text. Dr. Alexander has been an invited scholar in the Netherlands, Singapore, and Australia and has been the featured speaker at various major research conferences, including the annual meetings of the National Reading Conference, the American Psychological Association, and the American Educational Research Association.

At present, Dr. Alexander is the incoming co-editor of Contemporary Educational Psychology, and Fellow and President of the American Psychological Association, Division 15 (Educational Psychology). She is also Program Chair for Division C of the American Educational Association for the 2000 meeting.

Prof. Alexander was named the Jean Mullan Professor of Literacy in 2008. See Release

Recipient of the 2007 Sylvia Scribner Award from Division C of AERA. The annual award recognizes a program of work by a Division C member that over the last 10 years has significantly advanced thinking and research in the field of learning and instruction.