In 1977 Karplus was elected president of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), and in 1978 the National Science Teachers Association awarded him their Citation for Distinguished Service to Science Education. Karplus was chairman of the Graduate Group in Science and Mathematics Education (SESAME) from 1978 to 1980. In 1980 he was awarded the AAPT's highest honor, the Oersted Medal, "for his many contributions to physics teaching at all levels and especially for his work in revealing the implications for physics teaching of research in the development of reasoning." Karplus was appointed the dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education in 1980. The prestigious Karplus Prize in Chemical Physics at Harvard is named after him.