Professor of Practice
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Ruth Shear (she/her) teaches UT Austin undergraduates how to think like a scientist. After completing her PhD in Chemical Physics from Griffith University (Australia), she joined the teaching faculty at UT Austin in 1996 and is now a Professor of Practice. She helped create the UT Austin Freshman Research Initiative (FRI), which involves first-year science majors in authentic research as part of their degree program. Along with Mary Poteet and Stuart Reichler, Ruth is a co-Research Educator in the Urban Ecosystems FRI research lab, which takes in 80 first years each year, and 20-30 high school students each summer, and studies the effects of urbanization on aquatic ecosystems, while encouraging our students to become engaged with both science and love of our environment. Her personal research with the students involves performing analytical chemistry, identifying and tracing pollution sources. Also, some of her students work with the US Geological Survey, analyzing large amounts of national environmental data. She recently helped redesign the General Chemistry teaching lab class, to integrate many of the ideas originally taught only to FRI students and served an inaugural class of 4700 students in Fall 2024. Ruth has an interest in scientific communication, teaching her students the importance of more public engagement and making science more accessible and understandable.