UAlbany ‘Promising Researcher’ Strives Toward Excellence, Social Justice in Literacy Education

By Bethany Bump

ALBANY, N.Y. (Oct. 14, 2025) — Scott Storm, an assistant professor of literacy in UAlbany’s School of Education, was selected as the 2025 recipient of a Promising Researcher Award from the National Council of Teachers of English, given each year to one individual worldwide on the basis of a research paper they submit within two years after earning their PhD.

His paper, titled “Change the Form, Change the World: Approaching Critical Literacy in Youth Composing Through Queer Literary Theory,” examined how youth use creative and literary techniques to promote critical thinking, equity and freedom. His findings showed how youth, in their writing, flipped normative tropes and imagined new forms into being to work toward social justice.

Storm, who joined UAlbany’s Department of Literacy Teaching & Learning in 2024, has been passionate about English language arts and literacy since he was a kid. His father, who avoided reading storybooks at his son’s bedtime because he was unable to read all the words, would instead tell his son true stories of working for labor rights with his union.

“His stories were punctuated with aesthetic flourishes — artful syntactical constructions, complex narrative structures, recurring metaphors,” Storm recalled. “I was fascinated by how an education system could have failed my father in traditional literacy learning even while he demonstrated many rich literacy practices.”

Storm would become even more invested in the world of literacy as he navigated his gay identity and coped with homophobic bullying at his public high school in rural Pennsylvania.

“My response to these kinds of oppressions was to write my own fantasy novels set in magical worlds free from homophobia, yet I never felt safe enough to share this writing in school,” he said. “I wondered how a school system allowed literacies that harmed others, but foreclosed space for more liberatory literacies.”

The summer before his senior year of high school, Storm was accepted into the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Teaching, which allowed him to stay on a state university campus for five weeks and learn about educational theory and practice in a tight-knit community of scholars. It is there, he said, that he fell in love with big educational thinkers like John Dewey, Paulo Freire, Maxine Greene, Lisa Delpit and Gloria Ladson-Billings, as well as with the practice of teaching literacy.

Storm would go on to attend Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he majored in educational studies and English literature and earned his teacher certification. He became a high school English teacher and taught for 15 years in urban public schools. During this time, he earned his master’s in educational leadership from Bank Street College of Education in New York City and co-founded Harvest Collegiate High School, a New York City public high school where he worked as a classroom teacher and held leadership roles that included directing an after-school writing center.

"At this school, I served diverse populations including youth of color, multilingual learners, queer and trans youth, and students with disabilities,” he said. "I helped sustain the school for over a decade before moving into higher education.”

Storm went on to get his PhD in English education from New York University in 2023 and was a visiting assistant professor of education at Bowdoin College in Maine for one year before joining the faculty at UAlbany.

“I was drawn to UAlbany because of my deep connection with New York public education from my time as a high school teacher,” he said. “I saw the SUNY system as an engine of social mobility for so many of my former students. In fact, some of my former high school students are current UAlbany students and have come to my office hours where we drink tea, and they tell me how college is going, and I am able to act as an informal advisor.”

Storm was also drawn to UAlbany because of its rich history of research and teacher preparation in literacy and English language arts. In fact, one of his inspirations in the field, the late Arthur Applebee, was a former recipient of the NCTE Promising Researcher Award in 1974 and a former distinguished professor in UAlbany’s Department of Educational Theory and Practice from 1987 to 2015.

“What a great honor for Dr. Storm,” said School of Education Dean Virginia Goatley. “This award puts him in the company of scholars who have gone on to be major players in the field of education, including our own Distinguished Professor Arthur Applebee. We are proud of Scott’s accomplishments early in his academic career and we are thrilled that through his significant research here at UAlbany’s School of Education, he carries on Dr. Applebee’s legacy in advancing the field of literacy education.”

“I am humbled to be receiving this award over a half a century after Dr. Applebee won the award,” Storm said. “To me it is a great honor to be able to continue Dr. Applebee’s legacy of striving toward excellence and social justice in English education and literacy education.”