Faculty Profile

Education: BA, Pacific Lutheran University, 1988; MA, University of Nebraska, 1991; PhD, University of Nebraska, 1996. At SPU since 2002

Ruth Ediger received her BA at Pacific Lutheran University where she was a history major, a political science minor, and was certified for secondary education. She earned her MA and PhD from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, NE specializing in the major field areas of International Relations, Comparative Governments and the subfields of International Political Economy, International Security and Foreign Policy, European Politics, European Public Policy. Her dissertation was on “The Role of the Church in the Fall of Communism: The Cases of East Germany, Poland, and Romania.”

Before coming to SPU, Dr. Ediger taught at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee where she helped create a new Political Science program. Since coming to SPU, Dr. Ediger has taught many different classes including International Relations, History of American Foreign Relations, Global Perspectives on Women’s Issues, and UCOR 2000 The West and the World. She is known across campus for demanding that students know all the current countries and capitals of the world (go to her website if you would like to try one of these geoquizzes). In addition to advising Political Science students, she is also one of the two Global Development Studies advisors. In 2013, Dr. Ediger was awarded the ASSP Faculty of the Year, an honor of which she is most proud.

From to 2005 to 2010, she conducted sixteen different workshops for various groups of K-12 teachers funded by the US Federal Department of Education’s Teaching American History Grant. Her current research interests involve studying ways to improve university level teaching including the integration of active learning pedagogy into the political science curriculum and the development and assessment of political science curriculum.

Selected Publications

• “International Internships for United States Undergraduates: Assessment and Accreditation Challenges” co-presented with Dr. Kathleen Braden at the Euro-American Conference for Academic Disciplines in La Baume, Provence, France, June 8, 2010.

• “Assessing the Usefulness of Extra-Textbook Materials” presented for the “Program Assessment” track at the annual APSA Teaching and Learning Conference, San Jose, California, February 22-24, 2008.

• “Teaching in the World: Knowing the Location of the Nation-States Using a Computer Based Geoquiz Program” presented for the “Teaching with Technology I” track at the annual APSA Teaching and Learning Conference, Washington, D.C., February 18-20, 2006.

• “The Creation of an Undergraduate International Relations Canon: Beginning the Dialog” presented at the 47^th Annual International Studies Association Meeting, March 22-25, 2006 in San Diego, CA.

• “History of an Institution as a Factor for Predicting Church Institutional Behavior: The Cases of the Catholic Church in Poland, the Orthodox Church in Romania, and the Protestant Churches in East Germany” published in the September 2005 issue of the East European Quarterly.  Vol.39, No.3, pp.299-328.

• “The Church as a Viable Force in Shaping Eastern European Politics During the Fall of Communism: The Cases of East Germany, Poland, and Romania,” presented at the Conference of Scholars as sponsored by the Eastern Europe Institute of Waldorf College, biannual meeting March 1998.

Please view Dr. Ediger's CV (PDF) for additional publications.