Dr. Oslund completed his undergraduate work at California Polytechnic State University.  He earned his Master’s degree in School Psychology from West Texas A&M University.  After working in a K-12 setting for several years, he earned his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.  Upon graduating, he completed a two-year fellowship at the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk at the University of Texas. 

He began his academic career at MTSU in 2014 and was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in 2019. He was promoted to full Professor in 2024.  For the past five years, he has served as Chair of Elementary and Special Education, was Chair of Chairs in 2024-2025, and is a current Provost's Fellow. 

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Selected Recent Publications:

Toste, J.R., Espinas, D., Oslund, E.L., Elleman, A., & Biancarosa, G. (in press). Measuring what matters: Understanding what reading assessments really tell us. The Reading League Journal 

Mahmoodi Shahrebabaki, M., & Oslund, E.L. (2024). Teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. In J. I. Liontas & M. DelliCarpini (Eds), The TESOL encyclopedia of English language teaching. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Porter, S., Odegard, T.N., Farris, E. A. & Oslund, E.L. (2024). Effects of teacher knowledge of early reading on students’ gains in reading foundational skills and comprehension. Reading and Writing, 37, 2007-2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-023-10448-w

Fields, R. S., Elleman, A. M., Oslund, E. L., Clark, L. B., & Olson, C. (2023). Effects of Adapted Self-Regulated Strategy Development for Second Language Adolescents. Reading Psychology, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2023.2169798

Oslund, E.L., Elleman, A.M., & Wallace, P.K. (2021). Factors related to data-based decision making: Examining experience, professional development, and the mediating effect of confidence on teacher graph literacy. Journal of Learning Disabilities. 54(4), 243–255. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219420972187

Clemens, N.H., Oslund, E.L., Kwok, O., Fogarty, M., Simmons, D.C.  & Davis, J.L. (2019).  Skill moderators of the effects of a reading comprehension intervention?  Exceptional Children, 85, 197-211. DOI: 10.1177/0014402918787339

Rollins, A., Oslund, E.L., Wallace, K., & Li, D. (2019).  Statistical methods and reporting in the study of dyslexia.  Dyslexia, 25, 103-112. DOI: 10.1002/dys.1602

Oslund, E.L., Hagan-Burke, S., Simmons, D. C., Clemens, N. H., Simmons, L. E., Taylor, A, Kwok, O., & Coyne, M. D. (2018).  The predictive validity of curriculum-embedded measures on outcomes of kindergarteners identified as at-risk of reading difficulty.  Journal of Learning Disabilities.  

Oslund, E.L., Clemens, N.H., Simmons, D.C., Smith, S., & Simmons, L.E. (2016).  How vocabulary knowledge of middle-school students from low socioeconomic backgrounds influences comprehension processes and outcomes. Learning and Individual Differences¸ 45, 159-165.  DOI:10.1016/j.lindif.2015.11.013

Oslund, E.L., Simmons, D.C, Hagan-Burke, S., Simmons, L.E., Coyne, M.D., Kwok, O., & Taylor, A. (2015). Can curriculum-embedded measures predict the later reading achievement of kindergarteners at risk of reading disability? Learning Disability Quarterly, 38, 3-14. DOI: 10.1177/0731948714524752 Recipient of the Outstanding Researcher Award from the Council for Learning Disabilities

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Selected Recent Presentations:

Shewalter, P., Elleman, A.M., Odegard, T., & Oslund, E.L. (July 2025). The effects of altered font for students with and without decoding difficulties. Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Oslund, E.L., (June 2025). Dynamic System of Early Assessment. Bridging the Assessment to Instruction Gap via Technology. International Workshop, Leiden, Netherlands.

Oslund, E. L., & Elleman, A. M. (April 2025). National expansion and supporting remote PhD students. Hollyhock Foundation Convening, New York, NY.

Sisco, K., & Oslund, E.L. (2025). Professional development on teacher understanding and utilization of database decision-making. Literacy Research Conference, Murfreesboro, TN

Oslund, E.L., & Elleman, A.M. (February, 2023).  Differences and relations among teacher confidence, use, and data-based decision-making literacy. Poster presented at the Pacific Coast Research Conference, San Diego, CA.

Oslund, E.L., Elleman, A.M., Griffin, N., & Meyers, K. (2021, April). Vocabulary instruction for middle school students: Five research-based recommendations for practitioners.  Symposium presentation at the Society for the Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, Minneapolis, MN.   

Oslund, E. L., Elleman, A.M., Wallace, K., & Kim, J.. (July, 2019) Using quantile regression to examine teacher confidence and graph literacy in data-based decision making.  Presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Toronto, Canada.

Oslund, E.L., Elleman, A.M., Wallace, K.P., & Kim, J. (February, 2019). The impact of pre-service training, professional development, and experience on teachers’ graph literacy.  Presentation at the Pacific Coast Research Conference, San Diego, California.

Oslund, E.L., Elleman, A., & Wallace, K. (June, 2018).  RTI use, graph literacy and scoring: A preliminary examination.  Data-based Decision Making in Education, Leiden, Netherlands.

Oslund, E.L. (2017).  Adolescent reading comprehension: Research, practices, and interventions. Presentation at Middle Tennessee State University Literacy Conference, Murfreesboro, TN. 

Oslund, E.L., Odegard, T., Elleman, A. (2017).  Reading achievement differences among latent classes of struggling elementary school readers.  Poster presented at the Pacific Coast Research Conference, San Diego, CA. 

Oslund, E.L., Simmons, D.C., Clemens, N.H., & Fogarty, M. (2016, July). Examining intervention effects on adolescent reading comprehension using quantile regression.  Presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Porto, Portugal.   

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Dr. Oslund’s research interests involve multiple aspects of reading and data-informed decision-making in educational settings.  His initial work focused on early reading intervention and instruction in a response-to-intervention framework.  In addition to effective instruction, he examined how various student assessments (e.g., benchmarks, progress monitoring, CBMs, CEMs) can be best utilized to make data-based instructional decisions to maximize student learning.  His work in this area earned him the Outstanding Researcher Award from the Council for Learning Disabilities. His international impact is significant, and his work has been accessed over 500,000 times from over 100 countries and cited thousands of times. 

Dr. Oslund’s work has also focused on adolescent reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge.  Specifically, he has examined the complex relationship among the multiple skills involved in the reading process (e.g., fluency, vocabulary knowledge, inferencing) and their relation to reading comprehension from both theoretical and applied orientations.  In addition, he has utilized advanced statistical modeling to design, evaluate, and gain a deeper understanding of educational measures and decision-informed decision-making. 

Across these areas of research, Dr. Oslund has focused on the interaction of reading processes and student characteristics such as language status and proficiency, socioeconomic status, and student risk factors.  He specializes in using advanced statistical modeling to examine the complexity and intersection of reading, student characteristics, and measurement with the ultimate goal of helping students become better readers and teachers become better at making data-informed decisions. 

Dr. Oslund also prepares future professors, teachers, administrators, and researchers, having served on dissertation committees for 27 PhD students at MTSU, including chairing the committees of 15 PhD recipients. 

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Recent Funded and Unfunded Research Projects:

“MTSU Literacy Studies PhD Program” (2025-2030). Elleman, A.M., Oslund, E.L., & Odegard, A.M. Sponsored by the Hollyhock Foundation (Private). Funded at $1,198,000.

“Leaders in Education Advancing Dyslexia Interventions Equity and Research for Special Populations.” Oslund, E.L. (Project Director), Vaugh, S. (Co-Pi), Reed, D. (Co-PI), Elleman, A. (Project Personnel) (2024). Office of Special Education Program, Department of Education (Federal). Unfunded for $3,708,218.

"Scholarships for Master's Students in the Chemical Sciences," (2024-2030). Friedli, A. C., (Principal), Oslund, E. L. (Advisory Board and Evaluator), Handy, S. T. (Co-Principal), Ding, K. (Co-Principal), Chusuei, C. C. (Co-Principal), Miller, J. M. (Co-Principal), Bicker, K. L. (Co-Principal), Zhang, M. (Co-Principal). Funded by the National Science Foundation (Federal) in August 2023 at $1,972,199.

“NSF S-STEM Scholarship Program: Computer Science Plus, Plus (CS++).” (2017-2022)  Dong, Z. (Principle), Oslund, E.L. (C0-PI), Petty, C. (C0-PI), & Phillips, J. (C0-PI). Funded by the National Science Foundation (Federal) in 2017. Total funded award of $999,968.

 "Teachers and Students Together: Building Understanding from Doing Science (TST-BUDS)," Rowe, E. (Principal), Camp, J. (Co-Principal), Oslund, E. L. (Co-Principal), Sadler, K. C. (Co-Principal), Smith-Walters, C. L. (Co-Principal). Unfunded by the National Science Foundation (Federal) for $449,997.

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