Dr. Rauchwerk has a personal and professional commitment to equitable and inclusive schooling, skills as an innovative and effective educator and leader, and ongoing scholarly and practice-based research. Her specialization is science, STEM, and STEAM education. She teaches courses in undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and professional development programs in science, health and STEM methods, education research, Critical Exploration in the Classroom, school systems and change, and curriculum.
Her work at Lesley includes serving as the Co-founder and Executive Director of WonderLab, the Lesley University Lab School, program director for Science in Education, co- director of Elementary Education, program director for the Urban Teacher Center, core science education faculty with the Biogen STAR Initiative, and the first Educator in Residence at Mt Auburn Cemetery through the Ecosystem Project funded by the Ruggiero Trust grant (video).
Dr. Rauchwerk engages in ongoing work supporting equitable education initiatives in Ethiopia, she published a paper about her work with Luminos Fund’s Ethiopia Speeds School. Teacher candidates in Dr. Rauchwerk’s science and STEM methods classes have been researching and building culturally relevant science lessons and stories, and thinking more broadly about how poverty and access to education affects learning. Thanks to a generous grant from Lesley University, she traveled to Ethiopia in 2016 to train Ethiopian educators and librarians as part of the Ethiopia Reads Book Centered Learning Committee. Through a partnership with WEEMA, the science stories written and illustrated by Lesley students are translated into three languages and distributed through WEEMA and Ethiopia Reads libraries. Read more about this project. Susan will return to conduct training in November 2018.
Dr. Rauchwerk has organized a number of public science events including Restoring Urban Environments the Climate Café and STEAM Exploration Party as part of the Cambridge Science Festival.
An avid gardener and environmental/sustainability activist, Susan helped Lesley students establish an organic garden, and continues to engage her students and WonderLab in using the garden to learn more about sustainability through growing organic food.
Read" A Conversation with Educator-in Residence Susan Rauchwerk" on the Mount Auburn Cemetery website.
More about the Mount Auburn partnership.
Read about Susan's elementary education course Ethiopia partnership, wherein Lesley University students are researching and building culturally relevant lessons, and thinking more broadly about how poverty affects learning. Read more about the work.