Susan Nolen studies how engagement in activity and motivation to learn develops over time in social contexts. She works within a sociocultural framework to understand why people take up or reject social practices and how motives arise in social interaction. Current projects include studying engagement in rigorous, project-based high school STEM courses and how it might be supported, studying student engagement in university-level capstone engineering projects, and studying change processes in the OSU School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering as they engage in a 5-year project to re-situate learning and professional preparation of engineers.

Center Projects:

• Shifting Departmental Culture to Re-Situate Learning and Instruction (2015-2020)