About Susan Singer
Susan Rundell Singer is Division Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at NSF and Laurence McKinley Gould Professor, in the Biology and Cognitive Science Departments at Carleton. She is a nationally recognized leader in undergraduate education and plant biology. In addition to a PhD in biology from Rensselaer, she completed a teacher certification program in New York State.
A developmental biologist who studies flowering in legumes and also does research on learning genomics, Susan is an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellow and received both the American Society of Plant Biology teaching award and Botanical Society of America Charles Bessey teaching award. She directed Carleton’s Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching, was a National Science Foundation (NSF) program officer in Biology, and is a co-author of the Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology report, as well as two introductory biology texts.
She has served on numerous boards, including the NSF Education and Human Resources Federal Advisory Committee, Biological Sciences Curriculum Study Board, the American Society of Plant Biology Education Foundation, and the Botanical Society board of directors; was a member-at-large for the AAAS Education Section; participates in the Minnesota Next Generation Science Standards team; and was a member of the National Academies’ Board on Science Education.
She has participated in six National Academies studies, including chairing the committees that authored America’s Lab Report, Promising Practices in STEM Undergraduate Education and Discipline-based Education Research: Understanding and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering. Currently she is improving undergraduate education through her leadership at NSF and across Federal agencies, implementing the undergraduate goals of the Federal Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics 5-year Strategic Plan.