Dr. Nancy Nelson, Meadows Chair

Nancy Nelson, PhD, is Professor of Education and Meadows Chair for Excellence in Education at the University of North Texas, where she joined the faculty in 2009 and served as chair of the Department of Teacher Education and Administration until 2014. Her scholarship focuses on literacy processes and practices, including intercultural dialogue, and she is best known for her research in academic discourse and discourse synthesis. Some of her work, including the book The Constructivist Metaphor, was published under the name Nancy Nelson Spivey. At UNT she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Language, Literacy, and Bilingual/ESL Education and in Curriculum and Instruction. Prior to coming to UNT, Nelson was on the faculty of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, where she also served as department chair, and of Louisiana State University, where she was the Elena and Albert LeBlanc Professor of Education and Director of the LSU Writing Project. She has also been on the faculty of the College of William and Mary, Carnegie Mellon University, and Texas Woman's University. Her doctoral and bachelor's degrees are from the University of Texas at Austin, and her master's degree is from Southern Methodist University.

In her role as Meadows Chair, Nelson focuses her attention on educational issues associated with linguistic and cultural diversity, academic writing, and the dynamics of intercultural communication. She is currently collaborating with UNT's International Office on several projects, including the UNT partnership with the Secretariat of Education of the State of Jalisco, Mexico. She has presented keynote addresses at a number of international conferences, including meetings held in Italy, Norway, and Mexico, and has held leadership roles in seminars in Costa Rica, New Zealand, Norway, and Spain.