Graduate Students
Sofia Abreu
Began: Fall 2019
Research interests: Sofia is interested in researching effective teaching with a holistic approach and the effect on students’ math interest. She is also interested in research at the undergraduate level, and wants to make math more accessible to all.
José Saul Barbosa
Began: Fall 2021
Research interests: Saul is interested in improving and better understanding the teaching of underrepresented undergraduate mathematics students, and to make mathematics more accessible, inclusive, and equitable for undergraduate students while allowing the opportunities to students of all levels of education to participate in research. A couple of his interests involve the use of language in the mathematics classrooms along with tutors and tutoring centers.
Ayesha Bundy
Began: Fall 2024
Research Interests: Ayesha's research interests are to explore undergraduate students' identities and how these may interact with different pedagogical approaches, as well as how these interactions may affect student learning, perception of mathematics, and sense of belonging.
Jose Contreras
Began: Fall 2023
Research interests: Jose's research interests are in equitable practices, ethnomathematics, and first-generation students in first-year undergraduate math courses. He wants to research the impact of public policy on learning environments and experiences of students who are often marginalized in math; equitable practices in K-16 mathematics education, governmental policy and its effect on math curriculum, non-western pedagogies, and ethnomathematics.
Maria Cruciani
Began: Fall 2023
Research interests: Maria's research interests include the teaching and learning of statistics, student-centered teaching, and inquiry-based learning. She would like to conduct research which measures the effects of these interventions for undergraduate mathematics and statistics students, as well as research that supports development of new curricular materials for K-16 statistics students.
Catherine Davis
Began: Fall 2023
Research interests: Catherine's research interest is in researching, developing and teaching transition to proof curriculums. They also have a secondary interest in designing and teaching more accessible early undergraduate mathematics courses.
Anthony Dickson
Began: Fall 2021
Research interests: Anthony is interested in researching and utilizing art-based and aesthetic approaches in (mathematics) education. This can allow us to see education in a new light and help students, especially those who have been failed by the traditional academic system, in their personal educational journeys.
Sara Elakesh
Began: Fall 2024
Research interests: Sara is interested in Middle Eastern students' experiences in mathematics regarding a sense of belonging, math persistence, and mathematical identity. She is also interested in how international students adjust when coming to the US, and in particular, how differences in language and culture affect mathematics learning.
Ashley Fabry
Began: Fall 2021
Research interests: Ashley would like to research ways to bring more relevance to math classrooms to improve students’ math identity and give them a sense of belonging and empowerment. She is also interested in literacy in mathematics and curriculum. She has been conducting teacher action research on how to use relevant, real world data to improve students’ math identities.
Tim Hansen
Began: Fall 2019
Research interests: Tim is interested in statistics/statistics education, and preparing future teachers—specifically, how people understand and interact with statistical ideas, statistical information and writing, including how their understanding develops over time.
Ahmad Wachidul Kohar
Began: Fall 2023
Research interests: Ahmad has been conducting research on teacher knowledge and beliefs in mathematics and its teaching and learning and has developed teacher professional development programs on mathematical literacy and creative thinking. He is also interested in the level of context use in math tasks. He would like to conduct research on developing learning-trajectory-based interventions that can improve teachers' or pre-service teachers' problem-posing skills on context-based math tasks.
Claire Lambert
Began: Fall 2022
Research interests: Claire is interested in different mechanisms, contexts and environments for learning and applying those to mathematics, as well as state and national policy issues related to the improvement of K-12 math ed. She is also interested in understanding how white teachers engage in culturally responsive pedagogy in the mathematics classroom.
Rileigh Luczak
Began: Fall 2018
Research interests: Rileigh's research interests include: student motivation, autonomy, and choices; social-cognitive development in mathematics; equity in the availability of quality math programs outside of the classroom; and the translation of concepts found in non-classroom math experiences to math classrooms and even to other subjects.
Alicia Matthews-Johnson
Began: Fall 2020
Research interests: Alisha is interested in cognitive development and learning, with a goal of teaching college level developmental mathematics and providing instructional support for current and future mathematics teachers.
Kira Morris
Began: Fall 2024
Research interests: Kira's research interests are centered on exploring the intersection of mathematics education and accessibility, particularly within the Deaf community. She would like to create an educational environment where communication barriers are eliminated and contribute to a more equitable and accessible landscape in mathematics education.
Sadrack Luden Pagiling
Began: Fall 2024
Research interests: Sadrack is interested in mathematics education research pertaining to secondary teachers' mathematics knowledge and teachers' beliefs abou the nature of mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning. He wants to develop and design differentiated mathematics instruction based on technology, including digital tools, to accommodate individual differences in mathematics learning.
Michael Quail
Began: Fall 2020
Research interests: Mike is interested in researching the mathematical knowledge required for teachers to effectively educate their students, and how students acquire an understanding of new mathematical concepts.
Seth Ricarte
Began: Fall 2024
Research interests: Seth is interested in undergraduate student thinking and how it manifests itself in their mathematical proof, and student-centered instructional practices that increase both the ceiling and floor of student success. He also is interested in game use in the classroom, homework practices, and flipped or inquiry-based classrooms to foster equitable outcomes/increase student learning and understanding.
Miguel Rodriguez Mejia
Began: Fall 2023
Research interests: Miguel's research interests are centered on exploring ways to bring mathematical modeling to a particular educative context as a rual school or population with differential social conditions. He is also interested in exploring ethnomathematics, critical mathematics, socio-epistemological theory of mathematics education, and an onto-semiotic approach for research in math education.
Sasha Rudow
Began: Fall 2023
Research interests: Sasha is interested in how students best learn mathematics, how inquiry-based learning influences mindset, and how a teacher can effect student learning.
Ishan Santra
Began: Fall 2023
Research interests: Ishan is interested in the politics of mathematics education and society—addressing the critical political and social nature of mathematics school level assessments, and how they interact and reinforce the existing social structures. He works with informal learning spaces where 'space' is conceptualized based on certain practicing principles of care, healing, and freedom (un-)related to mathematics learning and teaching. His country of origin is, and the research spaces he has been a part of, are India. His previous research interests centered around professional practices of mathematics in different out-of-school setups and engaging with a persisting uneasiness with methods and methodological paradigms in (mathematics) education research. Some of his writings can be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ishan-Santra.
Valerie Sosnowski
Began: Fall 2023
Research interests: Valerie is interested in student-centered approaches to teaching and learning—more specifically, how the attitude of the student towards the teacher, the subject, their classmates, and their role or standing in the class affects their performance.
Brady Tyburski
Began: Fall 2019
Research interests: Brady's research interests are primarily in undergraduate mathematics education and specifically the mathematical thinking of students in intermediate to upper level courses. In particular, he is interested in the connections students make between different types of functions and how they develop a so-called “unified” notion of function. He has also conducted research concerning calculus students’ understanding of fractions and improving the training of graduate teaching assistants.
Samantha Wald
Began: Fall 2023
Research interests: Samantha's research interests revolve around culturally relevant pedagogy. She would like to look at how, if at all, students perceptions of mathematics change by experiencing culturally relevant pedagogy and how students see themselves in relation to math before and after experiencing culturally relevant pedagogy.
Kathryn Westby
Began: Fall 2020
Research interests: Katie plans to conduct research related to positioning and authority in mathematics classrooms as they segregate—albeit not always physically—SWD (Students With Disabilities) and the effects of this positioning in the development of SWD’s identities.
Sabrina Zarza
Began: Fall 2022
Research interests: Sabrina is interested in curriculum design, influencing math interest in the classroom, especially in communities where careers in STEM fields are lacking, and creating equitable classrooms.