[2] Chippewa author and UC Berkeley professor Gerald Vizenor has commented about Ruoff's work, "She has done more for Native American literature than anyone in history... She's done it with determination and brilliance.".
[8][9] Ruoff served on the University of Nebraska Press’s American Indian Lives series, as the Editorial Board General Editor from 1985 to 2008.
She served as the acting director from 1999 to 2000 of the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, a part of the Newberry Library.
Ruoff was a National Endowment for the Humanities director of Summer Seminars for College Teachers on American Indian Literature, in 1979, 1983, 1989, and 1994.
[12][7] In 2005, a festschrift special issue of Studies in American Indian Literatures was published honoring Ruoff.