Rate My Professor Bridgette Hard

Dr. Bridgette Martin Hard is a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. She serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies since 2019 and Principal Investigator of the BRITElab: Behavioral Research Informing Teaching Excellence. Hard earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University in 2006, B.S. in Psychology from Furman University in 2001, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Developmental Psychology at the University of Oregon. Prior to Duke, she led Stanford’s Psychology One Program for eight years, overseeing the curriculum for introductory psychology and directing a year-long teacher training program for PhD students and advanced undergraduates to develop teaching skills and integrate research and teaching.

Hard’s research explores the intersection of psychology and pedagogy, using classroom data to extend psychological theories and applying psychological insights to inform teaching practices. She specializes in curriculum development for introductory psychology and has published extensively in this area. Notable publications include the co-authored textbook Interactive Psychology: People in Perspective (W.W. Norton, second edition, 2023), “Reappraising test anxiety increases academic performance of first-year college students” (Journal of Educational Psychology, 2018), “Developing Collaborative Thinkers: Rethinking how we Define, Teach, and Assess Class Participation” (Teaching of Psychology, 2022), “Metaphors we teach by: Uncovering the structure of metaphorical lay theories of teaching” (Metaphor and the Social World, 2021), and “Connecting Introductory Psychology to Climate Change Can Empower Students” (Teaching of Psychology, 2025). She teaches Introductory Psychology to more than 600 students annually, Psychology Teaching Seminars, and supervises independent research studies. Hard has received the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award and Phi Beta Kappa Undergraduate Teaching Award from Stanford, the Robert S. Daniel Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, and the Robert B. Cox Teaching Award from Duke. She co-organizes the Psychology One Conference, National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, and Intro Psych Coast-to-Coast, and directs the Costanzo Teaching Fellow program.