Carol Booth Olson

Carol Booth Olson, PhD, is a Professor Emerita in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, where she has also served as Director of the WRITE Center and was the founding director of the UCI/National Writing Project. She earned her PhD in American literature from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her research focuses on improving academic writing outcomes for secondary students, particularly culturally and linguistically diverse learners in high‑need middle and high schools. She has been principal investigator on multiple large grants to support writing instruction, has received national recognition for her writing research, and has published numerous articles and books on adolescent literacy, cognitive strategies instruction, and the reading–writing connection.

Olson is a coeditor of Writing Instruction Across the Disciplines: Evidence-Based Practices in Grades 6–12, published by Guilford Press, and has authored several other books, including The Reading/Writing Connection. Her work has informed federal guidance documents such as the Institute of Education Sciences practice guide Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively, where multiple studies she led were among the few that met What Works Clearinghouse standards.