Reading Center Campaign

Funds to Support Student Scholarships, Honor Reading Educator

June 15, 2010

By Debra Cano Ramos

Graduating master’s in reading student Michelle Tran, left, tutors a student at the Reading Center, which offers instructional services for children and adults struggling with reading. Cal State Fullerton reading educators are raising funds to help support the center, students and services to the community.

Cal State Fullerton reading educators are raising funds to provide student scholarships and to establish an endowment in honor of the late Hazel Miller Croy, emerita professor of education and founder of the university’s reading education program.

Reading program alumni, as well as former and current reading faculty members have raised about half of the $25,000 initial fundraising goal, said Deborah Osen Hancock, emeritus professor of education and campaign steering committee chair.

The Reading Center Campaign steering committee and the Reading Educators’ Guild, the department’s alumni association, are spearheading the effort.

Coming up is a Saturday, June 19, fundraising event at the Reading Center. Alumni and current and retired faculty, along with family members and friends of Croy, are expected to attend the 10:30 a.m.-noon event.

“Honoring Dr. Croy is long overdue,” said Hancock, a Fullerton resident, who was hired by Croy in 1969 and retired in 1992. “She was ahead of her time — a visionary who founded the graduate reading program on campus and who was a pioneer in preparing reading specialists.”

The late Hazel Miller Croy came to campus in 1960 and founded the university’s reading education program. Cal State Fullerton reading educators are now raising funds to establish an endowment in her honor.

The endowment will enable the naming of the Reading Center after Croy, who came to campus in 1960 with 30 years of experience as an educator. She founded the master’s degree program in reading in 1966, retired in 1975 and died in 1993.

“Dr. Croy was so beloved by her students. I hear that over and over as I talk to reading alumni who knew her,” Hancock said.

Money raised also will support student scholarships in the graduate degree program in reading, as well as the children and adults who receive reading instruction. Additionally, funds will be used for Reading Center equipment and supplies and faculty development and research, Hancock said.

Croy was instrumental in starting the university’s community reading program in the late 1960s to provide much-need instruction for children struggling with reading, Hancock said.

For more than 40 years, the College of Education’s Reading Center, located in the Education Classroom building since 1975, has provided individualized tutoring to elementary- and secondary-age students and adults in efforts to improve their reading skills. Master’s students in the program provide one-on-one reading sessions as part of their graduate work. Reading Center services are also offered at Cal State Fullerton’s Irvine campus.

For information about attending Saturday’s event or to donate to the endowment, contact Bobbee Cline, College of Education director of development, at 657-278-7567 or bcline@fullerton.edu. For information about the Reading Educators’ Guild, visit www.readingeducatorsguild.org, or the Reading Department.