Melanie Sperling, an associate professor of education at University of California, Riverside's Graduate School of Education, has been elected a fellow of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy (NCRLL).

Founded in 1932, the NCRLL is a professional organization dedicated to furthering research in the teaching and learning of language and literacies. The NCRLL executive board elects two fellows each year, based on their outstanding research contributions in those areas.

Nominees must submit two letters of nomination written by current fellows, must be NCRLL members in good standing for the past three years and must make outstanding contributions to research and scholarship in language and literacy.

Sperling conducts research in secondary school English classrooms, studying the ways teachers and students work together to foster students' learning, especially in the area of writing and reading. She brings to this research a scholarly interest in discourse processes and written language.

She also teaches courses on literacy, writing research, and discourse and is affiliated with the Bay Area Writing Project and the Inland Area Writing Project in California. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees in English from San Francisco State University and her Ph.D. in education from UC Berkeley.

A post-doctoral fellow of National Academy of Education, she also received a Promising Researcher award from the National Council of Teachers of English, the Steve Cahir award for writing research from the American Educational Research Association Writing Special Interest Group and an Outstanding Dissertation award from the University of California, Berkeley School of Education.

Anne DiPardo, a faculty member at the University of Iowa was also elected as a NCRLL fellow this year.