Dr. Rushton's work sits at the intersection of STEM education research, teacher leadership, and institutional change. His areas of expertise include STEM teacher preparation and retention, teacher leadership development, professional identity formation, and communities of practice. He has deep experience in discipline-based education research, particularly in chemistry education, active learning environments, classroom discourse, and student engagement. His scholarship also spans research-practice partnerships, evaluation of large-scale federally funded initiatives, and the use of social network analysis and motivation theory to understand how teachers grow, lead, and persist in the profession.

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Gregory T. Rushton is a Professor of Chemistry and the Director of the Tennessee STEM Education Center at Middle Tennessee State University. He earned his PhD in organic chemistry and chemistry education and has spent his career working across K–12 and higher education to strengthen STEM teaching, learning, and leadership. Before entering higher education, he taught high school chemistry and physics, an experience that continues to ground his research and leadership in the realities of classrooms.

Dr. Rushton’s research focuses on how STEM teachers develop professional identity, leadership capacity, and resilience over time, particularly in high-need contexts. He has served as principal or co-principal investigator on more than $25 million in externally funded projects, primarily supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. His work has been published widely in leading journals in STEM education and chemistry education, and he previously served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Chemical Education.

As Director of TSEC, Dr. Rushton leads institutional and statewide efforts to support educators, build research-practice partnerships, and grow externally funded research. He is also deeply committed to mentoring graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and early-career faculty, with a focus on developing leaders who are both intellectually rigorous and deeply human in how they serve others.

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Dr. Rushton has an extensive publication record in leading peer-reviewed journals spanning STEM education, chemistry education, teacher education, and educational leadership. His work has appeared in outlets such as Journal of Chemical Education, International Journal of STEM Education, Science Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Educational Researcher, and Physical Review Physics Education Research, among others.

His publications address topics including teacher leadership, professional identity, classroom discourse, student engagement in active learning environments, and pathways into and through the STEM teaching profession. Collectively, his scholarship has been widely cited and contributes to both theoretical development and practical improvement of STEM teaching and learning across educational contexts.

See our full list of publications on google scholar too!

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