Holding considerable expertise in survey research, Susan Carol Losh attributes much of her success to her stubbornness. Inspired to her career by a course she took during her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology in 1968. She then continued her academic efforts at the University of Michigan with a Master of Arts in sociology in and a Doctor of Philosophy in sociology in 1973. Following these accomplishments, she joined Florida State University where she remained for the rest of her career.
First working as an assistant professor of sociology at Florida State from 1973 to 1978, Dr. Losh became an associate professor of sociology in 1978 and an associate professor of education psychology in 2000. From 2001 to 2009, she served as the program coordinator for learning and cognition, and was also the program leader for education psychology from 2006 to 2009. Alongside her teaching and research at Florida State, she was the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society from 2013 to 2017. Dr. Losh retired in 2020 after more than 45 years in the field.
In addition, Dr. Losh has spent decades providing her skills to various organizations as a consultant. From 1975 to 1981, she was a consultant for the city of Tallahassee, and later held the same role for the United Faculty of Florida from 1984 to 2002, where she was also the treasurer from 2006 to 2014, and the Florida College of Advanced Judicial Studies in 2014. Furthermore, she is presently active as a consultant for the Tallahassee section of the American Association of University Women, the National Science Foundation and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University.
Dr. Losh has also been involved with a number of other professional organizations. A member of the executive committee of the Southern Sociological Society from 1980 to 1982, she served the American Educational Research Association as the program chair and chair of the special interest group between 2011 and 2015. She additionally holds membership with the Tallahassee Scientific Society, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the American Sociological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Statistical Association.
Having accomplished much over the course of her career, Dr. Losh’s most notable achievements include the development of a historical data archive for the National Science Foundation’s survey of public understanding of science and technology, quintupling the number of graduate students in the learning and cognition program, and developing courses in social psychology, gender roles and statistics at Florida State University. She is also incredibly proud of having been the recipient of a grand total of five grants from the National Science Foundation. In 2003, Dr. Losh was honored as a research fellow by both the American Statistical Association and the National Science foundation, and she has also been a finalist for the Gagne Prize.