2021 Susan Gay Travel Scholarship Recipient
Matt O'Brien
University of South Florida
Biography
Matt O'Brien is a mathematics education doctoral student at the University of South Florida. His research interests include implementing the core practices into pre-service teacher education courses, increasing mathematics content knowledge of pre-service teachers, and implementation McDonald’s (2013) Instructional Activity Cycle with pre-service elementary teachers. Before becoming a graduate assistant at The University of South Florida, Matt taught five years in Illinois and nine years in Florida. Matt taught in the capacity of a special education teacher for 6-12 grade-level students.
Matt is a member of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE), National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), and Florida Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Currently, he is the Region IX Director for the FCTM. Matt works as a Graduate Research assistant on a university-funded grant with Dr. Sarah Van Ingen Lauer and Dr. Eugenia Vomvoridi-Ivanovic, teaching undergraduate elementary mathematics methods courses, and collaborating to develop an additional elementary mathematics methods course with Dr. Sarah Van Ingen Lauer. Over the past year, Matt presented at the FCTM Annual Conference and NCTM Virtual Regional Conference.