Rate My Professor Mellissa Collucci

Dr. Melissa Collucci is the Assistant Dean of the School of Education and Associate Professor of Literacy Education at St. Thomas Aquinas College, a position she has held since joining the institution in 2017. Her career in education began with ten years teaching K-6 grades, where she developed a deep appreciation for language and literacy skills. Prior to STAC, she served as a Professor of Literacy at various universities. Collucci holds a PhD from Montclair State University earned in 2017, an EdM from Rutgers University, and a BA from Rutgers University. At STAC, she has taught twelve courses within the School of Education, advised the Kappa Delta Pi International Honor Society in Education by inducting students and organizing community service events, co-developed the First Year Seminar curriculum with faculty colleagues, secured grants to establish tutoring programs for local children, and collaborated on maintaining engaging education delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Collucci's research focuses on preparing teachers to instruct foundational literacy skills in dynamic environments that foster success for all children, with particular emphasis on multilingual learners whose first language is not English. She stresses the inseparability of language and literacy, encouraging educators to value diverse language uses, leverage home languages for content mastery, and cultivate inclusive classrooms that prioritize safety and academic support. A notable publication is her co-authored article '20/20 Vision: Clearly Seeing What Works in an Online Learning Environment' in the 2022 ALER Yearbook, which examines qualitative data from novice teachers in an online Summer Literacy Program to highlight enduring online practices like robust literacy instruction, technology utilization, social-emotional considerations, and cultural attunement. She also received a Gannett Foundation grant in 2019 to support a literacy tutoring initiative and serves on the editorial board for the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers Yearbook.