Rate My Professor Monica Harris

Monica Harris is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning within the College of Education and Community Innovation at Grand Valley State University. She earned her Ph.D. in special education from the University of Kansas, where her doctoral research concentrated on strategy instruction and adolescent literacy, after beginning her graduate studies at Eastern Michigan University. Harris commenced her career in education as a secondary-level special education teacher, accumulating experience in both general and special education classrooms while developing and implementing programs tailored for students who struggle academically or face risks of school failure. She instructs courses in assessment and special education, and actively participates in faculty development initiatives as a Pew Faculty Teaching and Learning Center Faculty Associate, co-facilitator of learning communities, and speaker at events such as the Minds That Matter series. Additionally, she serves as faculty advisor for the Student Council for Exceptional Children chapter and contributes to university governance through service on the College Personnel Committee, Faculty Council, and strategic planning working groups.

Harris's research specializations encompass vocabulary instruction for adolescents, morphological analysis, response to intervention, school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports for students with significant disabilities, teacher preparation, collaborative teaching models, and instructional strategies for academically diverse classrooms. She is a Certified SIM Professional Developer with the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, collaborating with school districts to deploy research-based tiered interventions. Key publications include her 2011 article in Learning Disability Quarterly, 'The Effects of Strategic Morphological Analysis Instruction on the Vocabulary Performance of Secondary Students with and without Disabilities,' for which she received the 2008 Council for Learning Disabilities Outstanding Researcher Award, and 'Implementation of SW-PBIS and Students with Significant Disabilities in Urban Elementary Schools' (2014). Harris co-authored the book How RTI Works in Secondary Schools with Evelyn S. Johnson and Lori Smith. Her work influences practices in special education and literacy intervention across secondary and urban elementary settings.