Education

• Ph.D., Washington State University, 1986
• B.S., College of St. Benedict and St. John's University, 1982

Research Interests

Our research in the area of chemical education relates to the creation, use, and impacts of guided inquiry in the large classroom environment. One project involves developing and assessing active learning strategies and student transferable (process) skills. We have developed novel feedback rubrics to provide feedback to students on their transferable skills during team activities and in written work. Writing and testing materials that focus on transferable skills is also part of this project. Another project is investigating how errors made on organic chemistry concepts relate to these transferable skills and whether instruction and feedback on the progress of these skills will increase student understanding.

Select Publications

• Doug Czajka, Gil Reynders, Courtney Stanford, Renée Cole, Juliette Lantz, and Suzanne Ruder, “A Novel Rubric Format for Providing Feedback on Process Skills to STEM Undergraduate Students,” Journal of College Science Teaching, 2021 50, 48-56
• Gil Reynders, Juliette Lantz, Suzanne Ruder, Courtney Stanford, Renée Cole, “Rubrics to Assess Critical Thinking and Information Processing in Undergraduate STEM Courses"; International Journal of STEM Education, 2020, 7, (1), 1-15
• Suzanne M. Ruder, Patrick Brown and Courtney Stanford “Developing POGIL Materials: Writing and refining activities for a spectrum of content areas”, J. of Excellence in College Teaching, 2020, 31 (1) 195-228
• Suzanne Ruder and Courtney Stanford "Training undergraduate teaching assistants to facilitate and assess process skills in large enrollment courses", Journal of Chemical Education 2020, 97, (10), 3521–3529.
• Gil Reynders and Suzanne Ruder "Moving a Large-Lecture Organic POGIL Classroom to an Online Setting" Journal of Chemical Education 2020, 97, (9), 3182–3187.

Awards

• VCU Distinguished Teaching Award, 2012
• VCU College of Humanities and Sciences Teaching Award, 2009