Susanna Calkins, PhD

Susanna Calkins is the founding director of The Nexus for Faculty Success at RFU, which is a university-wide unit designed to advance learning and teaching, research and scholarship, and leadership in faculty. Prior to joining RFUMS in fall 2022, Dr. Calkins directed faculty initiatives at the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching at Northwestern University for almost 20 years, focusing on inclusive teaching, curricular and pedagogical innovation, assessment of student learning and program evaluation. She has co-authored two academic books (Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: The Reflective Professional (Sage, 2009) and Reflective Teaching (Bloomsbury, 2020, 2024), with a third Reflective Doctoral Education (Bloomsbury Press) in development. She has published over thirty peer-reviewed articles on different aspects of learning and teaching, and has been invited to speak in seven different countries and across the United States.

Dr. Calkins has worked extensively with several hundred faculty and departments in medical/health professions and STEM disciplines (developing programs, leading workshops, collaborating on scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) projects) to advance learning and teaching. She has collaborated on numerous grants, serving as co-PI on several, most recently the NSF Inclusive STEM Teaching Project, and a NSF/NRT grant to implement (and evaluate) an innovative curriculum offered by Northwestern's Center for Synthetic Biology. For twelve years she taught graduate-level courses in the Masters of Higher Education Administration Program at Northwestern University, including a course on learning and teaching in higher education, and history and philosophy of higher education. She currently is the course director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Journal Club for SGPS, and has been a facilitator for Principles of Professionalism, Health Care and Health Equity (P2H2) in CMS.

Her research has focused on conceptions and approaches of teaching, assessment of student learning, classroom assessment, and mentoring, and is starting a new project on Inclusive Teaching. She earned her PhD and MA in history (British history, women and gender studies) from Purdue and an MS in higher education administration from Northwestern University.

Publications

Books

• Hallett, F. editor. Ashwin, P., Boud, D., Calkins, S. Coate, K., Hallett, F., Keane, E, Light, G. Reflective Doctoral Education. Anticipated publication date 2026
• Ashwin, P., Boud, D., Calkins, S. Coate, K., Hallett, F., Keane, E, Light, G. (In Press) Reflective Teaching in Higher Education. Bloomsbury Publishing. 3r^d
• Ashwin, P., Boud, D., Calkins, S. Coate, K., Hallett, F., Keane, E, Light, G. (2020) Reflective Teaching in Higher Education. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2^nd
• Light, G., Cox, R., and Calkins, S. (2009). Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: The Reflective Professional, Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

• Calkins, S.; Conway, A.; Daniels, T.; Frey, R. F.; Gillian-Daniel, D.; Goldberg, B.B.; Greenler, R McC.; Hill, L.; Hokanson, S.C.; Johnson-Ojeda, V.; Pinder-Grover, T.; Armstrong, S.; Buchanan, D.; Dorizan, S.; Green, N.; Hernandez, I. A.; Himelman, L.; Immelman, T.; Keeles, O. W.; Lewis, H.; Shin, S.; Womack, V.; Woods, S. E.; York, A. M. Scaling inclusive teaching: A national STEM teaching initiative centering identity, power and privilege. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning.
• Chen, M., Kim, N., Bolden, L.,Mowbray, H. & Calkins, S. (2023) “The teaching happens both ways”: Transforming medical education through a co-created faculty-student-community health equity course. American Medical Association. MedEd's horizon: Just, merciful, diverse and equitable. pp. 32-35.
• Calkins, S. & Rivnay, J. (2021). The jigsaw design challenge: An inclusive learning activity to promote cooperative problem-solving. Journal of Effective Teaching in Higher Education, 4(3), 19-35.
• Calkins, S., Diehl, J., Getis, V., Guittar, M., Lee, R. A., & Stachowiak, J. (2021). Transparent by design: Collaborating to build a reflective faculty development program to enhance online teaching. The Journal of Faculty Development, 35, 78-87.
• Calkins, S., Grannan, S., & Siefken, J. (2020). Using peer-assisted reflection in math to foster critical thinking and communication skills. PRIMUS, 30, 475-479.
• Micari, M., & Calkins, S. (2019). Is it OK to ask? The impact of instructor openness to questions on student help-seeking and academic outcomes. Active Learning in Higher Education, 22, 143-157.
• Kelley, M. R., Chapman-Orr, E. K., Calkins, S., & Lemke, R. J. (2019). Generation and retrieval practice effects in the classroom using PeerWise. Teaching of Psychology, 46, 121-126.
• Grannan, S., & Calkins, S. (2018). Creating a culture for evidence‐based assessment of learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 155, 11-20.
• Calkins, S. & Light, G. (2015). Conceptions of mentoring in formalized faculty relationships. Chapter in The Mentoring Continuum: From Graduate School Through Tenure, Syracuse University Press.
• Light, G., & Calkins, S. (2014). The experience of academic learning: Uneven conceptions of learning across research and teaching. Higher Education, 69, 345-359.
• Cook, R. & Calkins, S. (2013). More than recall and opinion: Using clickers to promote complex thinking. Journal of Excellence in College Teaching, 24, 51-76.
• Calkins, S., Johnson, N., & Light, G. (2012). Changing conceptions of teaching in medical faculty. Medical Teacher, 34, 902-906.
• Calkins, S. & Seidler, A. (2011). Faculty perceptions of relevance in teaching and learning. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 23, 215-225.
• Calkins, S. & Micari, M. (2010). Less-than-perfect judges: Forty years of discourse on the value of students rating teachers in higher education. Thought and Action, 26, 7-22.
• Ben-David Kolikant, Y., Drane, D., & Calkins, S. (2010). Clickers as catalysts for transformation of both students and teachers. College Teaching, 58, 127-135.
• Calkins, S. & Drane, D. (2010). Engaging faculty in conversations about teaching through a research proposal workshop. To Improve the Academy, 28, 265-277.
• Light, G., Calkins, S., Luna, M., and Drane, D. (2009). Assessing the impact of faculty development programs on faculty approaches to teaching. The International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 20, 168-181.
• Calkins, S. & Light, G. (2008). University teaching. Chapter for Thomas L. Good (Ed.), 21^st Century Education: A Reference Handbook. Volume 11, 445-454. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Aravamudan, N., Calkins, S., Schuller, M., & Rubel, D. (2008). Integrating teaching and technology: Facilitating student-centered teaching for graduate students at a research university. Studies in Graduate and Professional Student Development, 11, 59-75.
• Light, G., & Calkins, S. (2008). The experience of faculty development: patterns of variation in conceptions of teaching. The International Journal for Academic Development, 13, 27-40.
• Calkins, S. & Light, G. (2008) Promoting student-centered teaching through a project-based faculty development program. To Improve the Academy, 26, 217-229.
• Calkins, S. & Kelley, M. R. (2007). Evaluating internet and scholarly sources across the disciplines: Two case studies. College Teaching, 55, 151-157.
• Micari, M., Light, G., Calkins, S. & Streitweiser, B. (2007). Assessment beyond performance: Phenomenography in integrated mixed-methods evaluation. Journal of American Evaluation, 28, 458-476.
• Kelley, M.R., & Calkins, S. (2006). Evaluating popular portrayals of memory in film. Teaching of Psychology, 33, 191-194.

Teaching: Course List

• Journal Club, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Science
• Effective Career Planning for PhDs. (NIH-supported course)