Sarah Bunnell
Director - Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and Associate Professor of Psychology
Department: Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning
Email: sbunnell@elon.edu
Phone number: 5503.
Brief Biography
Dr. Sarah L. Bunnell is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and an Associate Professor of Psychology. She is past-president of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, an ISSOTL Distinguished Service Award winner, and was recently selected as a Gardner Institute Russell Edgerton Innovation Fellow, which “recognizes distinctively innovative contributions to improving postsecondary education and student success.” A co-author of Being Human in STEM (2023, Routledge), Sarah is passionate about building student-faculty-staff partnerships to enhance teaching, learning, and thriving across educational spaces. Her research merges her disciplinary training in developmental and cognitive psychology with her 20 years of work in faculty development and SoTL.
News & Notes
Education
Ph.D., Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, University of Kansas
M.A., Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, University of Kansas
B.A., Neuroscience, Middlebury College
Courses Taught
Publications
Recent publications (*indicates student co-authors):
Luschen, K., Bunnell, S.L., Caldwell-O’Keefe, R., & Lee, E.* (2026). A dyadic analysis of pedagogical partnerships: Exploring alignment and misalignment in students-as-partners relationships. International Journal of Students as Partners, 10(1).
Kneeland, E.T., Bunnell, S.L., McQuade, J.D., Palmquist, C.M., Sanderson, C.A., & Totton, R.R. (2026). Integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion into Introduction to Psychology. In C.A. Sanderson and R.R. Totton (Eds.), Edward Elgar Publishing.
Hemmler, V.L., Rosenthal, I., Follette, K., Sarosi, C., Galyen, E., Buxner, S., Carter, J.*, Maynard, S.*, & Bunnell, S.L. (2026). Toward fairer and more equitable numeracy measurement: Improvements to the Quantitative Reasoning for College Science Assessment. Numeracy, 19(1).
Baxter, A.,* Peifer, S.,* Robin, A.,* Bunnell, S.L., & Reutenauer, L.M.S. (2025). Examining student learning of Infrared Spectroscopy in Organic Chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 102(6).
Schmalzbauer, L., Jaswal, S.S., Corañez-Bolton, S., Bunnell, S.L., Trapani, J.G. (2024). Critical Empathy in the Liberal Arts: The Sociological Imagination as a Mechanism for Re-envisioning Interdisciplinary STEM Education. In: Mandal, S. (eds) Roadmap for Humanities and Social Sciences in STEM Higher Education. Springer, Singapore.
Bunnell, S.L. & McGowan, S. (2024). The Ceremony of a SoTL Welcome: The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as a Case Study. Transformative Dialogues, 17(1).
Bunnell, S.L., Chick, N., Hamilton, M., Leoni, A.S., & Woolmer, C. (2024). Generations of SoTL Scholars: Transferable Lessons and New Possibilities. Transformative Dialogues, 17(1). doi
Zhang, E., Hundley, C., Watson, Z., Farah, F., Bunnell, S.L., & Kristensen, T. (2023). Learning by Doing: A Multi-Level Analysis of the Impact of Citizen Science Education. Science Education.
Chung, J., Bunnell, S.L., Lopez, A.M., & Olshansky, J.H. (2023). Leveraging Student-Faculty-Staff Partnerships to Implement Inclusive Curricular Reform in Chemistry Education. Journal of Chemical Education.
Bunnell, S.L., Jaswal, S.J., & Lyster, M.B. (2023). Routledge.