The Skip Prosser Literacy Program, including the Skip Prosser READ Challenge, is a collaboration between the Wake Forest Department of Education, Wake Forest Athletics, Wake Forest Basketball, and Wake Forest Student-Athlete Advisory Committee with support from Wake Forest Office of Civic and Community Engagement, ZSR Library, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, and the Winston-Salem based literary nonprofit Bookmarks.
The Skip Prosser READ Challenge was started in memory of former Wake Forest men’s basketball coach Skip Prosser in 2009. The program promotes reading by 4th grade students in Forsyth County schools and encourages them to read independently through out-of-class reading, in-class self-selected reading, and/or in-class silent-sustained reading.
In 2017, Dr. Alan Brown from the Department of Education began collaborating with Wake Forest Athletics to make the Skip Prosser Literacy Program the umbrella for various community-engaged literacy programs that involve undergraduate students and student-athletes from Wake Forest University.
One such project is Dr. Brown’s Paisley Sports Literacy Program, a weekly club for eighth-grade boys with an interest in sports. The program meets each week at Paisley IB Magnet School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The program is currently led by Dr. Alan Brown and Wake Forest student-athletes Caelen Carson, Jahmal Banks, Quincy Bryant, and Dashawn Jones.
