Wendy C. Newstetter, assistant dean of Educational Research and Innovation in the College of Engineering, has been appointed to a three-year term on the Army Science Board (ASB).

The ASB is a federal advisory committee organized under the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the Government in the Sunshine Act. Composed of 58 members and consultants, the committee conducts annual studies and provides the secretary of the Army and secretary of Defense with independent and transparent advice and recommendations on matters relating to scientific, technical, manufacturing, acquisition, logistics, and business management functions.

Newstetter, a cognitive and learning scientist, has investigated cognition and learning both in classrooms and on the frontiers of science. The problem-based learning approach followed by many faculty members in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory was influenced by Newstetter’s ethnographic studies of learning and problem solving in three interdisciplinary research laboratories — tissue engineering, neuroengineering, and integrated systems biology. This work, chronicled in Science as Psychology: Sense-making and Identity in Science Practice, was awarded the American Psychological Association’s William James Book Award in 2012. Newstetter has worked with faculty across Georgia Tech and throughout the nation to develop novel approaches to teaching and learning — approaches that leverage what we knowing about learning.  

Newstetter previously served as director of Learning Sciences in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. She has also worked in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, and is an adjunct faculty member in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing.

Newstetter joins Gisele Bennett, of the Georgia Tech Research Institute, who is currently serving in her third year on the ASB. John-Paul Clarke, associate professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, recently completed a three-year term on the ASB.