Rachel Henderson

"I’m a physics education researcher who studies instructional pedagogies and assessment tools that can be used for improving learning for all students. As a member of the broader physics community, I’m committed to providing fair and effective educational practices in order to increase the representation of women and other historically marginalized groups within the field of physics."

Dr. Rachel Henderson earned her Ph.D. in Physics at West Virginia University ('18), where she used large, multi-institutional datasets, advanced psychometric theory, and deep demographic data to study the persistent gender differences in physics performance and physics self-efficacy. She moved to Michigan State University as a postdoctoral researcher and is currently an assistant professor. There, she's working on the development of formal structures, specifically assessment tools and practices for understanding student learning, to support the newly transformed physics laboratories at MSU.