Rachel Scherr Biography

Rachel E. Scherr earned her Ph.D. in physics at the University of Washington in 2001 and has held research and teaching positions at small, large, public, and private universities. She has extensive professional development leadership experience with educators at multiple educational levels, including undergraduate learning assistants, graduate teaching assistants, university faculty, and elementary and secondary teachers. A longtime physics education researcher, she conducts research to identify the seeds of sophisticated understanding in learners' ideas and investigates physics disciplinary culture and practices. Her research on the teaching and learning of energy has led to new teaching tools, new research methodologies, and new theoretical perspectives on physics learning. Her research on diversity and equity in physics learning environments helps change the culture of physics to better support women and people of color in physics. As a teacher, she creates and experiments with a wide array of active learning strategies and develops new courses that embody principles of learning. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, cited for foundational research into energy learning and representations, application of video analysis methods to study physics classrooms, and physics education research community leadership.