Dr. Yan Yang is a tenured Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of West Georgia. She has decades of cross-cultural teaching experience spanning from elementary to doctoral levels. Prior to coming to the U.S. in 2005, she taught English as a second language for six years in Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, China. While working to obtain her doctorate in Educational Psychology, Yang served as instructor and research assistant at Oklahoma State University for four years. She started her full-time career as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville upon graduation in 2009, after which she moved to University of West Georgia in 2011 until present. 

Dr. Yang mainly teaches courses in educational psychology at both undergraduate and graduate levels. She is known for her individualized approach to project-based learning (iPBL), which was not only well received by her students and colleagues at conferences, but also featured at CollegeSTAR as an exemplary innovative instructional practice applicable across disciplines for college professors. Dr. Yang is also recognized for instructor-led student research. She co-presents and writes with her students at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Her student presentations won numerous awards at both local and regional conferences. 

Dr. Yang’s major research interests are motivation in distance learning and diversity education. She published dozens of articles on peer-reviewed journals with national/international circulations and delivered research presentations at juried conference organizations at both national/international and local levels including American Educational Research Association (AERA) and American Psychological Association (APA). Dr. Yang won multiple awards such as "Best Paper Award" at Eastern Educational Research Association in 2015 and "distinguished Paper Award" at Georgia Educational Research Association in 2019. She was selected as OER Research Fellow in 2019 due to her dedication to and achievements in OER research and teaching initiatives.

Dr. Yang remains active in service activities as a contributing member and leader to various international and national conference organizations and journals.  She served on editorial boards as well as reviewed numerous articles for multiple top journals in her field such as Educational Psychology, Learning and Individual Differences, and British Journal of Educational Psychology. Dr. Yang is active with a range of service roles at various conference organizations including AERA and APA. She also delivers motivation keynote speeches and consultations to different populations and organizations across countries as a motivation scholar and consultant.