Constance Steinkuehler is a Professor in Digital Media at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Co-Director of the Games+Learning+Society (GLS) center at the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, and Chair of their annual GLS Conference. She currently serves as President of the Higher Education Videogames Alliance (HEVGA), an organization of higher education leaders whose mission is to underscore the cultural, scientific, and economic importance of video game programs in colleges and universities. In 2011-2012, she served as Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) where she advised on national initiatives related to videogames. Policy work there included the coordination of cross-agency efforts to leverage games toward national priority areas (e.g. childhood obesity, early literacy, STEM education) and the creation of new partnerships to support an ecosystem for more diversified innovation in commercial and non-commercial games.
Constance’s research is on cognition and learning in commercial entertainment games and, more recently, games designed for impact in areas including literacy, scientific reasoning, attention, and emotional well-being. Her work has been funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. She has published over twenty peer reviews publications on games and learning, edited three special issues of peer reviewed academic journals focused on the intellectual life of games and two books, and served on the authoring committee of the 2009 National Academies of Science report entitled Learning Science: Computer Games, Simulations, and Education. Game title credits include Tenacity (designed to foster self-regulation of attention) and Crystals of Kaydor (designed to increase social acuity and empathy). Constance’s work has been featured in Science, Wired, USA Today, New York Times, ABC, CBS, CNN NPR, BBC and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
