Dr. Carol Booth Olson is Director of the WRITE Center and the former director of UCI/National Writing Project. A Professor Emerita in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, she received her Ph.D. in American Literature from UCLA in 1977 and was honored as Outstanding Graduate Woman of the Year.
Dr. Olson is the Principal Investigator of several large grants, including a $14.7 million Education Research and Innovation (EIR) expansion grant and a $5 million Institute of Education Sciences grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Olson has published six books and over sixty journal articles on adolescent literacy, improving students’ academic writing at the secondary level, the academic writing of English learners, cognitive strategies instruction, and the reading/writing connection. She is the recipient of three national research awards for writing research. Four of her studies are included in the 15 studies (out of 3400 vetted) that met What Works Clearinghouse Standards and the basis for literacy recommendations in the IES Practice Guide Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively. Dr. Olson has devoted her career to improving the teaching of writing and academic writing outcomes for secondary students.