Robert Rueda, Stephen H. Crocker Professor in Education and professor of Educational Psychology at the USC Rossier School of Education, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Education (NAEd).
As an honorific society, the Academy consists of up to 200 U.S. members and up to 25 international associates who are elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship or outstanding contributions to education. Founded in 1965, the mission of NAEd is to advance the highest quality education research and its use in policy formulation and practice. The NAEd has sponsored numerous commissions and study panels including both NAEd members and other scholars from the world’s most prominent research institutions. It also awards postdoctoral and dissertation fellowships while undertaking collaborative research initiatives.
When the Academy convenes in April this year in Washington, D.C., Rueda will be welcomed as the first USC Rossier professor ever to be vested by the Academy.
“This is among the most prestigious of honors for an education researcher,” said USC Rossier Dean Karen Symms Gallagher. “Dr. Rueda has earned this distinction through a remarkable academic career that focuses on improving learning for underserved students. I join the University and my Rossier colleagues in offering my sincere congratulations.”
Rueda’s research interests focus on sociocultural factors in learning and motivation. He is currently engaged in work on several research and writing projects, including short term motivational interventions in developmental mathematics settings; cognitive and motivational factors in academic achievement with urban high school students; examining friendship and peer relationships as factors in bullying; and examining research on motivational interventions in school settings.
Rueda played a leadership role in the redesign of USC Rossier’s Education doctorate (EdD) program, building it into a national model for practitioner-based programs, according to the Carnegie Commission on the Education Doctorate. He continues to advise and mentor both EdD and PhD doctoral students who have gone on to become professors, deans and leaders in education. This year, he will travel to Hong Kong to teach an international cohort of students as part of USC Rossier’s recently launched Global Executive EdD program.
As an internationally recognized expert in literacy and language minority students in special education, he has served on several national panels, including the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth, and the Panel on Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education for the National Research Council. He was also a member of the editorial boards of multiple major education journals.
Rueda is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and the American Psychological Association. He has been affiliated with two national research centers (the Center for Excellence, Diversity and Education at UC, Santa Cruz and the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement at the University of Michigan) and has served on the advisory board of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA.
His recent book Urban Education: A Model for Leadership and Policy, co-authored with Karen Symms Gallagher, Rodney Goodyear, and Dominic Brewer, was published by Routledge.
Rueda earned his PhD in educational psychology with a specialization in educational psychology and special education from UCLA, his MSW in psychiatric social work from USC and his BA in psychology from UCLA.
