College of Education and Health Professions

Marta D. Collier, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Childhood Education
Curriculum and Instruction

203 Peabody Hall
Phone: 479-575-5498
FAX: 479-575-6676
mcollier@uark.edu

Degrees:

Ph.D., University of Iowa, Curriculum and Instruction, 1995
M.A.,  University of Iowa, Curriculum and Instuction, 1976
B.A.,  Earlham College, Elementary Education, 1974

Teaching Areas:

Early childhood education, literacy, children's literature, and classroom learning theory.

Research Interests:

Literacy
Classroom Design
Early childhood literacy
Culturally relevant children's literature

Professional Biography:

Marta Collier received her B.A. degree in Elementary Education from Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana and obtained her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. She has been a certified classroom teacher for the K-12 system in the states of Indiana, Georgia and Iowa and served as an adjunct, tenure track and now associate professor at the University of Arkansas College of Education and Health Professions. Prof. Collier has served as Vice President of the Northwest Arkansas Reading Council and a member of the International Reading Association, National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Arkansas Reading Association. She has served on the Undergraduate Studies and Graduate Studies Committees for the College of Education and Health Professions and currently serve as member of the Faculty Committee on Admissions and Transfer Credit.

Prof. Collier's teaching focus includes the areas of classroom learning theory, early childhood education and early childhood literacy. She has done research in the areas of recruitment and training of minority students for teaching positions through partnerships with community colleges, the impact of culturally relevant literature on literacy instruction and the effect of caring within schools on teaching and learning. Marta directed the Teach for Arkansas Project (TFA), (a collaboration between the COEHP and Phillips Community College, Helena, Arkansas) designed to deliver the Bachelor of Science in Education (BSE) and the Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degrees to several cohorts of teachers from Southeastern Arkansas through distance technology supported by grants and other resources from the Walton Family Foundation, Southwestern Bell Foundation and the COEHP. She was selected by her department to receive the Outstanding Teaching Award for 2005.

Grants:

Collier, M. (2005). An ethic of caring: The fuel for high teacher efficacy. Urban Review. In press.

Collier, M. (2005). A structure for caring in schools. Journal of Social Service Review. Manuscript accepted for publication with revisions.