Melissa Stalega

Melissa V. Stalega is an Assistant Professor of Special Education in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of North Texas. Her research focuses on early literacy development, reading difficulties, and the implementation of evidence-based practices in schools.

 

Dr. Stalega began her career at the University of Massachusetts–Boston, where she co-led the development of an inclusive preschool motor program designed to promote school readiness skills. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Connecticut, where her dissertation examined the role of lexical processing in set for variability, using a newly developed mispronunciation correction task. Over the past decade, she has investigated early intervention approaches for students with or at risk of persistent reading difficulty and has increasingly emphasized system-level improvement through an implementation science lens to sustain effective practices.

 

She has published in journals such as Scientific Studies of Reading, Infants & Young Children, and the Early Childhood Education Journal, and she is a contributing author to the Handbook on the Science of Literacy: Grades 3–8. Her research has been conducted in partnership with more than 30 public schools across multiple states.