Marie Clay Chair to Aid Literacy Research

The Ohio State University Board of Trustees on February 4, 2026 approved the Marie Clay Endowed Chair in Reading Recovery and Early Literacy. The $2.5 million endowment in the College of Education will support two faculty members who are experts in literacy and reading.

Reading Recovery is a worldwide program that trains teachers to administer intensive tutoring to first-grade children who are having difficulty learning to read and write. Nearly 1.5 million students have been tutored in North America since Ohio State College of Education faculty helped bring Reading Recovery to the United States in 1984.

Dr. Marie Clay of New Zealand was one of the most distinguished researchers in educational literacy in the world. She has been called "the Michael Jordan of reading" for changing the face of primary school literacy instruction.

Clay received her Ph.D. from the University of Auckland in 1966, where she had been on the faculty since 1960. She developed the Reading Recovery intervention program, which was adopted by all New Zealand schools in 1983. Faculty at Ohio State first worked with Clay in the early 1980s and she served as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar here in 1984-85. Marie Clay passed away in Auckland on April 13, 2007.

Her teachers' guidebook, Reading Recovery: Guidelines for Teachers in Training, has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide.