Mary E. Curtis, Ph.D. is Professor of Education and founding director of the Center for Special Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Before coming to Lesley in 1999, she directed the Boys Town Reading Center, where she oversaw research and development on Reading Is FAME®, a remedial reading curriculum shown to reverse reading failure in older adolescents.

Curtis earned her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, and she has been an Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University, Associate Director of the Harvard Reading Laboratory, and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Learning Research and Development Center (Pittsburgh, PA).

She is the lead author of the Tool Kit for the Student Achievement in Reading (STAR) project, a professional development initiative of the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education. Curtis also oversees program evaluation activities for the National STAR Training Network. She has also been an advisor to the National Institute for Literacy, the National Center for Family Literacy, and the Massachusetts Department of Education.