Homan receives COE Alumna Achievement Award

Susan P. Homan (BAE ’69. Ph.D. ’78), a University of Florida alumna and developer of a widely-used literacy intervention program, was honored with the UF College of Education’s Alumna Achievement Award at the college’s commencement on May 5, 2007.

Homan is a professor of literacy at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her areas of expertise include adolescent struggling readers, emergent literacy and diagnosis. She has co-authored several books and published over 30 articles in the literacy education field.

Homan was one of the developers of Accelerated Literacy Learning, or ALL, an early intervention program for first-graders performing in the lowest 20th percentile. She is currently co-director of the program, which is in place in 11 Florida school districts.

She is the author or co-author of a number of books on teaching reading, and is co-creator of the Homan-Hewitt Reading Formula, which is used in reading programs nationally and internationally. Her most recent research documents the beneficial effects singing lessons may have on the academic outcomes of struggling readers.

Homan received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from UF and a master’s in reading from the University of Central Florida. She returned to the UF to earn her Ph.D. in elementary education curriculum and instruction.

She has won many honors for her teaching and research, including the Marguerite Cogorno Radencich Award, given by the Florida Reading Association.