B. Keith Lenz

Keith Lenz has been an educator and researcher in education and special education for more than 30 years. Dr. Lenz has focused on the design, validation, and evaluation of interventions to promote the success of struggling students in middle and high schools and on adults with learning disabilities.  Dr. Lenz was a senior researcher at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning and on the faculty of the Department of Special Education for more than 20 years. He is one of the original developers of the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM), the Learning Strategies Curriculum, the Content Enhancement Series, and the Content Literacy Continuum approach to implementing RTI in secondary schools. He has developed planning models to promote collaborative teaching for inclusive classrooms through the design of the SMARTER Instructional Cycle and was the developer of the Graphic Interactive System for Teaching (GIST) software. His book series on using graphic organizers to plan and implement research-based interventions based on the principles of UDL (Universal Design for Learning) and strategic instruction classrooms are used by thousands of teachers across the United States. His current research interests continue to focus on instructional planning for inclusive teaching and best practices for implementing Open Education Resources (OERs) to improve student performance. He is currently on the faculty and the Coordinator of Special Education Graduate Programs in the Department of Elementary Literacy & Special Education at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas.