• To provide community outreach
• To build cultural understanding and awareness
•  To promote community* engagements
• To encourage civic engagement through service learning
• To equip teachers, parents and preservice teachers with knowledge, skills, and dispositions for supporting and scaffolding adolescent literacy and service learning
• To develop and provide collaborative professional development to promote adolescent literacy
• To encourage collaborative involvement among all stakeholders (including teachers, students, parents/guardians and university faculty).

Faculty Leadership Team

The leadership of the Center for Adolescent Literacies at UNC Charlotte includes:

• Dr. Bruce Taylor, Director, Assistant Professor (Dept. of Reading & Elementary Education)
• Dr. Tina Heafner, Associate Professor (Dept. of Middle, Secondary, K-12 Programs)
• Dr. Tracy Rock, Associate Professor (Dept. of Reading & Elementary Education)
• Dr. Karen Wood, Professor (Dept. of Reading & Elementary Education)

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

UNC Charlotte is located in the largest metropolitan area in the Carolinas, a region with extraordinary diversity and continued growth. Like other metropolitan areas of the United States, the Charlotte region faces the challenges globalization, urbanization, and an increasingly diverse citizenry. Literacy is a vital and complex issue that challenges all stakeholders on the region: children, families, businesses and others in the community. UNC Charlotte is the only doctoral granting research-intensive university in the Charlotte region and has the resources to work with community partners to design, implement, and sustain literacy initiatives that meet essential community needs.