Rachel holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Furman University. She has a master’s degree in Science Education from the University of Georgia. During her graduate work at the University of Georgia, Rachel supervised student teachers in the Departments of Social Science Education and Science Education. She also worked on an NSF funded project that used virtual reality software to teach gorilla behavior and the solar system. Rachel was a teaching assistant in elementary and middle school methods courses. She also served as the teaching assistant and subsequently teacher of a professional development workshop entitled Enhancing Middle and Elementary Mathematics and Science (Project EM & EMS). Rachel received an award for outstanding teaching assistant in 2002. She was also the graduate assistant for the qualitative inquiry program and coordinated the qualitative research classes and the QUIG (Qualitative Interest Group) Conference. During 2002-2004 she served on the Georgia Science Teachers’ Association’s Executive Board.

Rachel has presented papers at annual meetings of the Qualitative Interest Group and Association for the Education of Teachers in Science and the American Education Research Association. Her service activities include the review of proposals for the 2004 Higher Education Portion of the No Child Left Behind Act, the 2004 and 2005 Qualitative Interest Group (QUIG) Conference the 2002 and 2006 National Association for Research in Science Teaching Conference and the 2006 Association for Science Teacher Education. She also reviewed for the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards in 2000.

She is a member of the National Science Teachers’ Association, National Association of Biology Teachers, Association for Science Teacher Education, National Association of Research in Science Teaching, Kappa Delta Pi, and Phi Lambda Theta. As a science program officer at KSTF she is part of the team that is responsible for guiding the KSTF fellows in becoming professional high school science teachers. She is primarily responsible for the 2005 Cohort of Physical Science Teaching Fellows and the 2008 Cohort of Biology Teaching Fellows.  She can be reached at r.foster@kstf.org.