Featured Speaker - Panel

Edward A. Silver teaches and advises graduate students in mathematics education and conducts research related to the teaching and learning of mathematics. He is currently the Senior Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Studies, the William A. Brownell Collegiate Professor of Education and a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  In the past he has served as Chair of the Educational Studies Program and as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the School of Education at the University of Michigan on the Ann Arbor campus, and as Dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, one of the university’s two regional campuses. Before joining the U-M faculty, he taught at the middle school and high school levels in New York State and at universities in Illinois, California, and Pennsylvania.

His scholarly interests include the study of mathematical thinking, especially mathematical problem solving and problem posing; the design and analysis of intellectually engaging and equitable mathematics instruction for students; innovative methods of assessing and reporting mathematics achievement; the practices of mathematics teaching and methods to enhancing teachers’ knowledge and effectiveness; and examining the interface between research and practice in education and enhancing productive interchange between education research and practice. He has published numerous articles, chapters, and books on these and related topics.

He currently directs two projects supported by funding from the National Science Foundation – one aims to explore ways to transform PISA assessment items and results into resources for teacher professional learning, and the other involves an investigation of the beliefs and practices of mathematics teacher educators and teacher professional development specialists regarding formative assessment. He also directs the Usable Scholarship in Education (USE) Initiative at the University of Michigan, in which he and others are probing the nature of the connections and disconnections between educational scholarship and educational policy/practice.

In Fall 2015 he was the Fulbright Canada Visiting Research Chair in the Faculty of education at the University of Alberta. He recently completed his three-year term as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators. He has previously served on several National Research Council Committees, numerous advisory boards for projects and organizations, as one of the principal authors for Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, as editor of the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education from 2000-2004, and as co-editor of The Elementary School Journal from 2008-2010.

He has received a number of recognitions for his work, including the 2004 Award for Outstanding Contributions of Educational Research to Practice from the American Educational Research Association, the 2007 the Iris Carl Memorial Leadership and Equity Award from TODOS, the 2008 Judith Jacobs Lectureship from the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators; the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the 2011 Senior Scholar Award from the American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group for Research in Mathematics Education. In 2016 he was selected to be a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.

Christine (Chris) Franklin is the Lothar Tresp Honoratus Honors Professor and Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Statistics at the University of Georgia and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. She has been recognized with numerous teaching and advising awards at UGA. She is the co-author of an Introductory Statistics textbook with Alan Agresti and Bernhard Klingenberg, co-author of the textbook Statistics Reasoning in Sports with Josh Tabor and has published more than 50 journal articles and book chapters. Chris was the lead writer for the American Statistical Association Pre-K-12 Guidelines for the Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) Framework. She chaired the writing team of the ASA Statistical Education of Teachers (SET) report.

Chris completed her term serving as the Advanced Placement Statistics Chief Reader in July 2009. She has been honored nationally by her peers with the Mu Sigma Rho National Statistical Education Award, the United States Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS) biennial lifetime achievement award, and the ASA prestigious Founders Award. She was a 2014-15 Fulbright Scholar, spending six months at the University of Auckland, New Zealand working with statistics educators on the project, “Implementing K-12 Statistics Standards: Comparing Practices in New Zealand and the United States”.

After 36 amazing years as statistics faculty in higher education, Chris retired from the University of Georgia in June 2016. In fall 2016, Chris begins serving as the K-12 Statistics Ambassador for the American Statistical Association.

Chris’s husband Dale Green is a physician who currently is an associate professor in the UGA School of Public Health. They have two sons, Corey Green (working on a PhD in forestry with a focus on biometrics at Virginia Tech and married to Lisa – a first grade teacher) and Cody Green (a fourth year student at University of Georgia). Chris loves to run, hike, and attend baseball games.

Elizabeth A. Burroughs, Ph.D., is Department Head and Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Montana State University with a research focus in K-12 mathematics education. She is a member of the AMTE Standards for Mathematics Teacher Preparation task force and is the Governor for Teacher Education on the MAA Board of Governors. She a co-PI on the NSF-funded Program Immersion, a collaborative project between George Mason University, Harvey Mudd College, and Montana State University, focused on professional development in mathematical modeling for elementary grades teachers. A 2014-15 U.K. Fulbright scholar, Beth is a former high school mathematics teacher.

Perla Myers is Professor of Mathematics and Associate Dean of Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of San Diego (USD), where she has been on the faculty since 1999. She earned her B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Houston, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California, San Diego. Perla is passionate about achieving equity in education and diversifying the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, and believes that one step towards these goals is changing the reaction people have towards mathematics: She would like people to smile when they hear the word mathematics.

Dr. Myers works closely with students, colleagues and the community, as transformation is achieved through joint efforts, when students, families, future teachers, educators, leaders come together to create affirming experiences, delve into creative explorations, and empower each other to persevere, enhance their understanding, and reinforce the belief that they are capable. In collaboration with her students, colleagues and the community, Perla enjoys creating experiential opportunities in mathematics and STEAM at USD and at K-12 schools locally and abroad, including summer camps, family nights, mathematics walks, teacher workshops, conferences, and other community events. Her most recent initiative, Project Mathigami, takes advantage of origami to explore mathematics with college students, educators, and K-12 students and their families.

Perla is active with the Mathematical Association of America, most recently as a governor, is the liaison for the Association for Women in Mathematics to the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in the Sciences (SACNAS), and is a proud life member of SACNAS. She co-organized Preparing Mathematicians to Educate Teachers (PMET) national workshops, and was co-PI on a California Mathematics and Science Partnership Grant for an Inquiry Learning Partnership with the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center and a couple local school districts. Perla is currently co-PI of an NSF grant to enhance the diversity of USD faculty through the recruitment, advancement and retention of women in mathematics, science, engineering and the behavioral sciences and is PI of an NSF S-STEM grant to increase the number of college students in STEM.  She received the University of San Diego’s Women of Impact Award, the Innovations in Experiential Education Award, and the Mathematical Association of America Southern California-Nevada Section Award for Distinguished University Teaching of Mathematics.