Nancy Padak

Nancy Padak, Ed.D., is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Education at Kent State University, where she directed the Reading and Writing Center and taught in the area of literacy education. She formerly served as Principal Investigator for the Ohio Literacy Resource Center, supporting adult and family literacy programs, and has experience as both a classroom teacher and district administrator. An active researcher, author, and consultant, Padak is a past president of the College Reading Association and has been editor of The Reading Teacher and the Journal of Literacy Research.

Padak has coauthored numerous works on literacy and vocabulary development, including Fast Start for Early Readers: A Research-Based, Send-Home Literacy Program and Fast Start: Getting Ready to Read, early intervention programs designed to build young children’s reading fluency, word recognition, and comprehension through home-based activities. She is also a coauthor of Building Vocabulary with Greek and Latin Roots: A Professional Guide to Word Knowledge and Vocabulary Development and Greek and Latin Roots: Keys to Building Vocabulary, resources that provide research-based strategies for teaching word roots to enhance students’ vocabulary and reading comprehension.