Laura McCullough (physicist)

Laura Ellen McCullough (born 1954)^[1] is an American physics educator, and a professor in the Chemistry & Physics Department at the University of Wisconsin–Stout.^[2] She is known for her work on women in physics.^[3]

As a high school student, McCullough already intended to become a physics professor.^[3] She majored in physics at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, graduating magna cum laude in 1994. She continued her studies in physics at the University of Minnesota, receiving a master's degree in 1997 and completing a Ph.D. in physics education in 2000.^[4] Her dissertation, The Effect of Introducing Computers into an Introductory Physics Problem-Solving Laboratory, was supervised by Patricia Heller.^[5]

She joined the University of Wisconsin–Stout as an assistant professor of physics in 2000, and was promoted to associate professor in 2004. In 2010 she became a full professor. She chaired the university's physics department from 2008 to 2014.^[4]

McCullough is the author of the book Women and Physics (IOP Publishing 2016; 2nd ed., 2024).^[6]

McCullough was the 2019 recipient of the Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service of the American Association of Physics Teachers.^[7] In 2022, she received the Teaching Excellence Award of the University of Wisconsin System, the first professor at the University of Wisconsin–Stout to receive this award.^[3]

She was named as a Fellow of the American Association of Physics Teachers in 2022.^[8] In 2025, she was named as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), after a nomination from the APS Forum on Diversity and Inclusion, "for sustained, significant, and impactful research on and service towards promoting gender equity in physics".^[9]

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