About Sue Frantz

Sue Frantz is a first-generation college student who earned her BA in psychology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and her MA in social psychology from the University of Kansas in 1992. She has been passionate about sharing the concepts of psychology with her diverse student community since she began her teaching career as an adjunct professor at community colleges in the Kansas City area, before landing her first full-time professor job at New Mexico State University—Alamogordo (NMSU-A). After teaching at Highline College in the Seattle area for 22 years, she is now faculty emerita. Having relocated to Las Cruces, NM, she is affiliate faculty of psychology at New Mexico State University.

Frantz has been active in the national teaching of psychology community since the early 2000s. She was on the executive committee of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology for eight years, serving as its president in 2019. Since 2025, she has served as the society’s executive director.

She received NMSU-A’s Teaching Excellence Award in 1998, Washington State’s Ana Sue McNeill Assessment, Teaching and Learning Award in 2011, and was the inaugural recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Excellence in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at a Two-Year College or Campus Award in 2013. In 2016, she received APA’s highest honor for professors of psychology—the Charles L. Brewer Distinguished Teaching of Psychology Award. In 2026, she was honored by Psi Chi as a Distinguished Member, the society’s highest recognition.

Sue is co-author with Charles Stangor on FlatWorld’s Introduction to Psychology, 5e (2026) and Principles of Social Psychology, 3.0 (2024). The latter earned the Textbook Authors Association’s 2025 Textbook Excellence Award. She is also co-author with Douglas Bernstein and Stephen Chew of Teaching Psychology: A Step-by-Step Guide, 4e (2025).

Download Frantz’s CV to learn more.