Sam McKagan is the creator and director of PhysPort.org, a website that supports physics faculty in using research-based teaching and assessment in their classes and departments. She has conducted research into physics faculty members’ and department heads’ needs around research-based teaching and assessment, and conducted several meta-analyses of the impact of research-based teaching in physics.

She is currently serving as editorial director for EP3, and as design and development director for the Living Physics Portal (livingphysicsportal.org), an online environment for physics faculty to share and discuss free curricular resources for teaching Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences.

She has served as a physics education research consultant or evaluator for Seattle Pacific University, University of Colorado - Boulder, Augsburg College, and Boise State University. She was a post-doc with the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado - Boulder, and has a Ph.D. from the University of Washington for theoretical work on Bose Einstein Condensation.