Shawnee State University (SSU) founded Project BEAR: Building Emerging and Achieving Readers, an AmeriCorps program, to support literacy development and improve school readiness in the Appalachian region. After the first 2 years of program implementation, areas for growth including enhanced service member recruitment, member onboarding, and ongoing professional development with coaching that focused on 10 early literacy key concepts were identified. This executive summary and capstone project demonstrate how professional development grounded in adult learning theory can improve service member retention and build service member competency. The capstone product, a Blackboard classroom with an onboarding suite and 10 early literacy modules, was designed to improve service member recruitment, onboarding, and training. Providing service members with a solid foundation in early literacy concepts and key strategies to implement in early childhood classrooms should also improve children's literacy development and school readiness outcomes. The capstone product can be a valuable resource for other AmeriCorps programs, volunteer organizations, or nonprofit agencies that work with volunteers to improve early childhood literacy, as the 10 learning modules serve as a professional development tool across contexts. The program director identified several opportunities to improve Project BEAR based on service member feedback, which included focusing the recruitment video on the benefits to prospective service members, streamlining human resources paperwork in the onboarding process, enhancing the blending and segmenting module, and placing a greater emphasis on differentiation and accommodations for individual learners. Although the previous training program, Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) Early Childhood (EC), remains a vital component of service member preparation, service members reported the 10 early literacy modules enhanced their confidence, knowledge, and understanding of how to apply content in the classroom. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]