Ruth Wright Chabay (born 1949) is an American physics educator known for her work in

educational technology Educational technology (commonly abbreviated as edutech, or edtech) is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, edtech, it often refer ...

and as the coauthor of the calculus-based physics textbook ''Matter and Interactions''. She is professor emerita of physics at

North Carolina State University North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The universit ...

Education and career

Chabay earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1970 from the University of Chicago, and completed a doctorate in physical chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1975. Her dissertation was ''The Design and Evaluation of Computer-Based Chemistry Lessons'', and was supervised by Stanley G. Smith. From 1975 to 1977 she worked with the PLATO computer-aided instruction system at the Computer-Based Education Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois, and from 1977 to 1980 she was a researcher at the Laboratory of Theoretical Biology in the National Cancer Institute. After working as a software developer for four years, she returned to academic research in the psychology department of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

from 1984 to 1987, and in the Center for Design of Educational Computing and the Center for Innovation in Learning at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

from 1987 to 2002. She became a professor of physics at North Carolina State University in 2002, and retired to become a professor emerita in 2010.

Textbook

With Bruce A. Sherwood, also of North Carolina State University, Chabay is the author of the two-volume textbook ''Matter & Interactions'' (Wiley, 2002).

Recognition

Chabay was elected as a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of American Physic ...

in 2009 "for contributions to the development of computer-based learning and tutorial systems, visualizations, and curricula that have modernized and improved how students learn physics". In 2014, the American Association of Physics Teachers gave Chabay and her coauthor Bruce Sherwood the David Halliday and Robert Resnick Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Chabay, Ruth 1949 births Living people 20th-century American physicists American women physicists University of Chicago alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni North Carolina State University faculty 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American physicists 21st-century American women scientists American textbook writers Women textbook writers American women academics