Rate My Professor Katherine Bruce

Katherine Bruce is a Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). She earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Psychology from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in Health Education from the University of Georgia, and a B.A. in Psychobiology from Rhodes College. At UNCW, she directed the Honors Scholars College from 1999 to 2018 and founded the Center for the Support of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. Bruce teaches courses including Animal Behavior, Evolutionary Psychology, Teaching of Psychology, and previously Research Methods in Psychology, with honors sections incorporating international travel experiences.

Bruce's academic interests center on comparative cognition, particularly complex learning such as abstraction, functional equivalence classes, and working memory in rodents using automated olfactory procedures like the odor span task. She was co-principal investigator on a National Institutes of Health grant investigating complex learning in rodents. Her research also encompasses behavioral pharmacology effects on cognition, mating behaviors in non-human primates, rodents, fish, and human risky sexual behavior along with attitudes toward sexually transmitted infections. Key publications include "What-Where-When Memory in the Rodent Odor Span Task" (2014), "Behavioral Pharmacology of the Odor Span Task: Effects of Flunitrazepam, Ketamine, Methamphetamine and Methylphenidate" (2016), "Successive Incrementing Non-Matching-to-Samples in Rats: An Automated Version of the Odor Span Task" (2020), "Effects of Set Size on Identity and Oddity Abstract-Concept Learning in Rats" (2019), "Matching- and Nonmatching-to-Sample Concept Learning in Rats Using Olfactory Stimuli" (2011), and "Development of an Instrument to Measure Attitudes Toward Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" (1989). She has received the UNCW Honors College Faculty Mentor Award (2025), National Collegiate Honors Council Sam Schuman Award (2024), NCHC Fellowship (2010-present), and CASE/Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year for North Carolina (2008).