Dorothy Strickland is the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Professor of Education at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. A former classroom teacher, she was formerly the Arthur I. Gates Professor at Teachers College Columbia University.

Strickland has served on the faculties of Kean University and New Jersey City University. She taught in the New Jersey public schools for eleven years - six as a classroom teacher, and five as a reading consultant and learning disabilities specialist.

Past president of both the International Reading Association and its Reading Hall of Fame, Strickland held several elected positions in the National Council of Teachers of English. She is also active in the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and is a member of the panels that produced Becoming a Nation of Readers and Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Strickland has been featured on several national videotape series on literacy learning and teaching.