Meet Our Staff

Melissa A. Cain, Ph.D. Professor, College of Education Year Started at UF: 1992 Contact Information   Office Location: 300 Davis Street #161 Telephone: 419-434-4840 E-mail: cain@findlay.edu

Credentials
	Ph.D., University of Toledo M.A., University of Toledo B.S., Bowling Green State University

Dr. Cain taught in the primary grades for eight years. Her love of children's literature and her fascination with helping children learn to read lead her to pursue a master’s degree and then a doctorate. She came to The University of Findlay in January 1992 when the education master’s degree was just beginning. She developed and taught one of the core classes, EDUC 502: Collaboration: Education and Community. She taught many classes in the Elementary Education program, including Developmental Reading I and II, Language Arts Methods, and Children's Literature. She co-wrote the Early Childhood program when the Ohio licensure standards changed in 1997-1998 and wrote the Reading Core and Endorsement programs.

Dr. Cain has been the NCATE co-coordinator for the education unit since 1997 and the Dean of the College of Education since 2001. Under Dr. Cain's leadership, the College of Education developed its unit and candidate performance assessment system and successfully passed its April 2005 NCATE review with no conditions. Dr. Cain wrote a funded grant from the Ohio Department of Education to expand the College of Education’s Assessment system. As part of that grant, the College was able to send ten program directors to the College LiveText User’s Conference in Chicago in July 2005 and hire a consultant to assist in expanding the College’s use of LiveText for generating candidate performance data.

Dr. Cain is a member of the following professional organizations: 

• National Council of Teachers of English,
• International Reading Association,
• Phi Delta Kappa,
• American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE),
• Ohio Association of Teacher Educators (OATE),
• Ohio Association of Private Colleges of Teacher Education (OAPCTE), Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), and Ohio Colleges of Teacher Education Organization (OCTEO).

Dr. Cain is on the test item review committee for the Ohio Fourth Grade Reading Achievement Test. She was also the Ohio Board of Regents' Transfer Articulation Guarantee Committee and the Ohio Department of Education’s 2005 Assessment Conference planning committee. In 2003-2004, Dr. Cain was on the planning committee for the Ohio Literacy Leader’s Network summer conference in Columbus. Dr. Cain has also been active with the Ohio Board of Regents technology initiatives resulting from their PT3 grant.

Dr. Cain is a founding member and on the Board of Cooperative Services for Children’s Literature, a collaboration of education and library professionals whose mission is to support the use of good children’s literature in classrooms and libraries. Cooperative Services for Children’s Literature is housed in the Curriculum Resource Center at Bowling Green State University. They sponsor an annual Book and Reader Conference every October in Perrysburg, during which the Hughes Moir and Bonnie Chambers Lecture is delivered by a guest author of children’s books. Dr. Cain has also been on the planning committee for the Mazza Summer Institute: Children’s Picture Books: Windows on the World since its inception.

Dr. Cain is a member of a four-person team of children’s literature professors from northern Ohio who write a monthly book review column for The Toledo Blade. Dr. Cain writes the column three times a year. Each column has a theme, with the November column being “Gift Books for the Holidays.” Recent columns have included “If You Can’t Wait for the Next Harry Potter Book, Try These Fantasies,” “Books from Illustrators for the Mazza Summer Institute,” and “What’s New in Poetry.”

In 2004-2005, Dr. Cain wrote the College of Education's Policies and Procedures Manual, the College of Education Student Handbook, and the UF NCATE Institutional Report and Rejoinder.