Community Education Staff

Susan Campbell, Ph.D.

Dr. Susan Campbell was appointed The Cooper Institute Vice President for Education in 2005. She oversees the Division of Education – a portfolio totaling approximately $3 million of the Institute budget – and directs the development of policies, standards, guidelines and staff training for education, certification, dissemination and advocacy.

Dr. Campbell began her professional career with the USO as a program director for the military. In the mid-1980s, she transferred her managerial and administrative expertise to the European division of City Colleges of Chicago – Programs for the Military where she served as Director of Field Operations and then Acting Associate Dean of Education.

While in Europe, Dr. Campbell completed a master’s of education degree in counseling with Boston University and fulfilled a clinical internship as a drug and alcohol counselor. During her graduate internship Dr. Campbell designed an innovative program for substance abuse patients with the duel diagnosis of depression. Based on her innovative clinical work, Dr. Campbell was recruited by Resource Consultants, Inc. as the senior counselor in Europe working with individuals leaving the federal service under stressful conditions.

Dr. Campbell returned to the United States in 1994 as a public health educator for the Department of Navy where she provided leadership and direction for activities and development of the public health education and promotion branch of the Naval Hospital Corpus Christi. During the years that followed, Dr. Campbell was promoted to Deputy Director of the Division of Preventive Medicine and Health Promotion at the Navy Environmental Health Center and served as primary technical advisor in providing guidance, support, coordination, and assistance to personnel concerned with Navy and Marine Corps health promotion and preventive medicine programs in North and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Middle East. She provided expertise on health promotion and community health issues with the responsibility for planning, conducting, evaluating, and interpreting complex health projects. Projects encompassed highly technical specifications where expertise in formulating policy, establishing objectives and providing procedural guidance to locally based staff coordinators was necessary. She monitored performance levels and programs for over 40 world-wide field sites.

In the late 1990s, Dr. Campbell transferred her health and human service expertise to The Cooper Institute where she has served as behavioral science faculty, Human Resources Director, Vice President of Strategic Resources, Deputy Executive Director and then Acting Executive Director. Dr. Campbell obtained her Ph.D. from Capella University in the School of Human Services with a specialization in Management of Nonprofit Agencies.

Ruth Ann Carpenter, M.S., R.D., L.D.

Ruth Ann Carpenter is Director of Dissemination and Advocacy at The Cooper Institute in Dallas, Texas. She has over 20 years of experience developing educational materials for nutrition and physical activity behavior change programs in research, community, and worksite settings.

She has developed curricula, newsletters, interactive educational workbooks, and video scripts for many different clients including the American Heart Association, Kellogg’s, Sandoz Nutrition, Tropicana, PowerBar, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Jenny Craig, Novartis, and Roche. Ruth Ann has developed and taught training workshops in nutrition, exercise, and health promotion for clients around the world.

She has co-authored six health promotion books, including Active Living Every Day and her newest book, Healthy Eating Every Day. She serves on the faculty of the American Dietetic Association’s Certificate in Training in Adult Weight Management program.

Ms. Carpenter received her Master’s degree in Applied Nutrition with extra coursework in exercise physiology from the Pennsylvania State University. Her undergraduate degree is in Chemistry from St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York.

Rachel Huber, M.P.H., R.D.

Rachel Huber is Associate Director for Dissemination and Advocacy in the Division of Education. She joined The Institute in 2003 after completing her master’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also a registered dietitian.

Rachel’s responsibilities at The Institute include applying behavioral research to the development of training programs, educational materials and products for health professionals and the lay public.

While at The Institute, she has overseen the development and/or implementation of evidence-based healthy eating and physical activity behavioral skill building curricula including: Active Living Every Day (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2001), Healthy Eating Every Day (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2005) and The Illinois WISEWOMAN Program (funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2001-present).

Experiences in both community and clinical nutrition have allowed Rachel to work with a variety of organizations and clients on health behavior change. To stay abreast of the latest trends in nutrition in physical activity, she maintains her membership in the American Dietetic Association and serves on the executive committee of the Weight Management Dietetic Practice Group.