William Kist, Ph.D

William Kist, Ph.D. is a professor at Kent State University, where he teaches literacy courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.  He is the proud recipient of the 2017 Outstanding University English Language Arts Educator Award, given by the Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts. A former high school English teacher in the Akron Public Schools and a former language arts and social studies curriculum coordinator for the Medina County Schools’ ESC and for Hudson City Schools, Bill has been working with schools and districts on a national level for over 15 years in the areas of integrating technology and using high-yield instructional strategies with struggling students.

Bill has presented many keynote addresses for such organizations as the National Dropout Prevention Conference, American Reading Forum, Texas Council of Teachers of English, The International Association for Entertainment Marketing Professionals, and the South Carolina Teachers of English. An author of over 50 articles, Bill has penned four books including New Literacies in Action, The Socially Networked Classroom, The Global School and the recently published Getting Started with Blended Learning (ASCD, 2015). Over the last two years (2015-2017), Bill has been the Project Director for College Today, a $480,000 grant-funded project (Great Lakes Education Philanthropy) designed to provide college-level English and math instruction on a daily basis to two small cohorts of underrepresented students at Akron Ellet and Akron Firestone High Schools.  In addition, Bill is currently directing Writing Ourselves, a project funded by the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation that is bringing together English teachers from nine area high schools in an effort to help struggling writers get ready for college.

Bill also keeps active creatively, working as a professional musician (with a regional Emmy nomination for music composition to his credit).  Bill can be found online at www.williamkist.com and at https://twitter.com/williamkist.