Robert Lebeau, EdD

Robert Lebeau currently serves as director of both the Cognitive Skills Program and the Office for Advancing Learning, Teaching, and Assessment at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The former is a student-facing program that provides academic support to trainees across the medical education spectrum. The latter is a faculty and administrator-facing program dedicated to understanding and continually improving the learning environment in which those trainees collaborate and learn.

Dr. Lebeau co-directs and teaches in the Distinction in Medical Education elective sequence designed to introduce medical students to teaching and scholarship in medical education. He also contributes to the wider educational mission of the school through past and current work in admissions, curriculum and faculty development through various standing and ad hoc committees.

He began his career in education as an instructor in botanic gardens and environmental centers. This experience aroused his interest in the intersection between formal and informal learning experiences and in the tensions between the provision of choice and structure in a learning environment. His work in medical education has proven a fertile area in which to explore these issues, with particular attention to the development of clinical reasoning and self-regulated learning.

Dr. Lebeau earned the following degrees in his formal education: B.A., 1987, University of Pennsylvania (History); Ed.M., 1993, Rutgers University Graduate School of Education (Science Education); and Ed.D., 1997, Rutgers University Graduate School of Education (Learning, Cognition, and Development). His additional training and professional experience prior to joining the RWJMS faculty includes a postdoctoral fellowship at Educational Testing Service and an appointment as Research Associate and Director of the Advanced Technologies for Learning Laboratory at what was then titled Temple University’s Center for Research in Human Development and Education.