Background
Vilma Mesa is Professor of Education and Mathematics at the University of Michigan, and Faculty Associate at the Center for the Study of Higher and Post-secondary Education at the University of Michigan. She investigates the role that resources play in developing teaching expertise in undergraduate mathematics, specifically at community colleges and in inquiry-based learning classrooms. She has conducted several analyses of instruction and of textbooks and collaborated in evaluation projects on the impact of innovative mathematics teaching practices for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. She is the 2022 recipient of the Association of Women in Mathematics’ Loiuse May Award for Contributions to Mathematics Education and 2022 University of Michigan’s the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Opportunity Mentor Award. She served as Associate Editor for the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education from 2000-2004 and is currently serving as associate editor for Educational Studies in Mathematics. She participated in the development of a video-based observation instrument, Evaluating the Quality of Postsecondary Mathematics Instruction, (EQIPM), which identifies three dimensions of quality. She is studying the use of open source and open access university mathematics textbooks by teachers and students. She has conducted several analyses of textbooks and has been involved in evaluation projects that study the impact of innovative teaching practices in mathematics for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. She was co-PI of the Mathematical Association of America's National Study of Calculus, funded by the National Science Foundation. She was a research associate at “una empresa docente” a research center in Mathematics Education at the University of Los Andes, in Bogotá, Colombia where she co-authored university textbooks for pre-calculus for engineering and probability and statistics for social science majors. She has published over 60 articles and book chapters in mathematics education and raised over $6M in federal funding to support her work. Prior to her career in education, Mesa was a systems programmer for the ministry of finances in Colombia and for the district of Bogotá, and a computing systems advisor for a large construction and hospitality firm in Colombia. She has a B.S. in computer sciences and a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and a master’s and a Ph.D. in mathematics education from the University of Georgia.