Brief biographical information:

My original training is in mathematics. Before embarking on my PhD studies in mathematics education, I earned a masters degree in mathematics from UC Berkeley. I wrote my thesis "On fixed points for discrete logarithms" (see attached) under the direction of Carl Pomerance, then of Bell Labs. My advisor at UC Berkeley was Paul Vojta. The research project I wrote about in my thesis began as joint work together with Carl during two summer internships at Bell Labs I participated in as part of a fellowship I had won for graduate studies in mathematics.

During my time as a math PhD student, I did some soul-searching and realized that I was yearning for some way to use my skills and expertise to make a more direct contribution to the lives of those around me. I got in contact with Alan Schoenfeld, a professor of mathematics/mathematics education at UC Berkeley, who became my mentor and future advisor. Together with researchers from UCLA and UW-Madison, Alan was just starting a new NSF-funded Center for Learning and Teaching: DiME (Diversity in Mathematics Education). It sounded like exactly the kind of opportunity I was looking for -- a chance to roll up my sleeves and concentrate on important social issues in the real world while still getting to use my training in mathematics. 

My work with DiME introduced me to myriad issues in contemporary public education at multiple levels: structural, community, school, classroom and individual. The conversations I had with my DiME colleagues really stretched me to think about why we teach mathematics and what kinds of things we can do to help all children have access to and engage meaningfully with powerful mathematics. DiME was focused on equity issues as they play out in middle school mathematics classrooms in local school districts.  The DiME project involved regular scholarly cross-campus seminars and writing efforts, in addition to our work with local middle school math teachers in their classrooms and in monthly professional development activities. 

Dissertation project overview:

My dissertation project has its roots in work I was doing in DiME middle school classrooms. One strand of my long-term program of research involves developing analytical and theoretical tools for studying learning and conceptual change in mathematics.  A focal part of my dissertation is an analytic case study of a pre-algebra student “discovering linear interpolation” as he solves problems. To understand how and why the student’s problem solving strategy shifted from a simple, yet purposeful approach to an essentially algebraic algorithm, I have adapted a conceptual change framework developed in science education (diSessa, 1993; Sherin, 2001) to focus my analysis around identifying the underlying conceptual refinements and reorganizations that enabled this important strategy shift to take place.

Understanding the nature and form of students' knowledge and how it grows and changes as they learn in important for iterative design efforts aimed at providing opportunities for all students to engage with mathematics.  My dissertation makes use of the analytic tools and framework developed in the individual case study in order to reflect on students' opportunities to learn in the classroom context in which I worked.  Both the classroom and individual case studies will be leveraged in thinking about future design work that harnesses students' conceptual resources. 

Personal:

Though I am full-time graduate student at Berkeley, I currently live in Pisa, Italy with my husband Aaron, a postdoctoral fellow at the "Ennio De Giorgi" mathematics research center.  We plan to move back to the states this summer.  

I am a serious violinist who enjoys participating in chamber music workshops and festivals and preparing community recitals and concerts.  While in Berkeley, I was the concertmaster of the Prometheus Symphony Orchestra and also performed with the Kensington Symphony and the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra.