Rate My Professor Katherine Bruce

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).