About Dr. Singer

Dr. Jill Singer

ATE Liaison

Dr. Jill Singer completed her M.A. (1983) and Ph.D. (1987) in geology from Rice University and joined the faculty at Buffalo State in 1986. She was promoted to Full Professor in 1998 and to the rank of SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2019 and teaches sedimentology/stratigraphy, oceanography, and environmental geology. In 2007 Singer received Buffalo State’s President’s Award for Excellence as an Undergraduate Research Mentor and in 2008 she received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Scholarship and Creative Activities. In 2016 Singer was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. Singer served as President of the Council of Undergraduate Research (CUR) from 2003 to 2004 and was named a CUR Fellow in 2016. Singer maintains a research program in applied sedimentology and has mentored/co-mentored more than 70 students in the past 25 years.

Dr. Singer has been the PI on education and research projects relating to hydrodynamics and sediment transport in rivers, improving undergraduate STEM education, and faculty professional development. Her funding has come from the National Science Foundation, United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2003, Singer was appointed Director of Buffalo State’s Office of Undergraduate Research and served as director through 2018. Over the past twelve years, she has been involved in the development of EvaluateUR, an integrated evaluation practice used to measure student learning gains and outcomes from participating in undergraduate research. She was the lead PI on a collaborative NSF WIDER grant to scale up this model to the national level and currently is the PI on two NSF ATE awards to modify EvaluateUR for course-based undergraduate research (EvaluateUR-CURE) and for students participating in remotely operated underwater vehicle competitions (Evaluate-Compete). Previously, Singer was the PI on Buffalo State’s NSF-STEP (STEM Talent Expansion Program) project (2005-2009) and the NSF-STEM Scholarship program (2007-2013). From 2001-2003 and 2007-2009, she served as a program director at NSF DUE where she managed a portfolio of education and educational research projects.

Areas of Expertise