Dionne Champion
Dionne started her career at TERC in 2017 as a Postdoctoral Fellow, researching STEM learning and identity in informal learning spaces and seeking to understand how the body can be a resource for sense-making and contribute to the development of agency. She is a learning scientist, a chemical engineer, an educator, and a dancer. Dionne has spent more than twenty years designing and engaging youth in interdisciplinary programming that disrupts hierarchies between the arts and the sciences and supports healthy conversations around race, power, equity, and social issues. She has written proposals, developed curricula, and implemented programming for pre-school through college-aged learners. Her current research focuses on the design and ethnographic study of environments that utilize dance to engage youth and scientists in physics, computational thinking and modeling, and complex systems. Dionne returns to TERC as a lead researcher on the Investigations project, focused on supporting the development of equity resources.
Cinthia Colón
Cinthia Colón comes to TERC with many years of experience acquired within the Boston Public School district. Her roles have encompassed a broad spectrum of responsibilities, including full inclusion classroom teaching, ESL instruction, mentoring, peer evaluation, and her current position as an academic support teacher. Throughout her career, she has demonstrated a deep commitment to the Investigations curriculum and a passion for fostering inclusive and accessible learning environments within diverse communities. Her primary goal has consistently revolved around integrating the real-life experiences of both students and colleagues into the mathematics and science classroom. Presently, her efforts are centered on establishing equitable practices for educators that support student engagement in elementary math classrooms.
Karen Economopoulos
Since coming to TERC in 1991, the majority of Karen’s work has focused on elementary mathematics. She is currently the director of the Investigations Center for Curriculum and Professional Development, where she is focused on how curriculum materials can support teachers in understanding more about the math they teach as well as how their students come to make sense of the mathematics they are learning. She is particularly interested in how this knowledge can guide and support teachers in making instructional decisions that are in the best interest of all learners, especially students who have been historically marginalized. In her time at TERC, Karen has worked extensively with classroom teachers, administrators, and school districts in the area of curriculum implementation and reform. She has served on numerous advisory boards including the Mathematical Sciences Education Board. She is a former classroom teacher with a special interest in supporting the range of learners in elementary classrooms and in early childhood mathematics.
Marta Garcia
Marta Garcia has been a teacher, math coach, and consultant for over thirty years. She has extensive teaching experience across K-6 and has coached in a variety of school and classroom settings with a focus on supporting teacher and student learning that centers sense making and agency. Marta leads professional development focused on Investigations; facilitates a Virtual Coaches Math Professional Learning Community; and teaches graduate courses in the Mathematics Teacher Leadership program at Mount Holyoke College. Her work with multilingual learners in a variety of contexts has inspired her to continually consider the intersection of language and mathematics. Marta is committed to work that focuses on ways to make mathematics accessible, joyful, and equitable.
Lynne Godfrey
Lynne Godfrey works with schools and districts to design and facilitate professional learning with coaches, teachers, and administrators, to grow ambitious, equitable learning communities in their schools. As an educator Lynne served in Boston, Cambridge, and Boston Teacher Residency as: a classroom teacher (grades 2-8), a school and district math coach, an upper school coordinator, and the director of instruction, curriculum and adult development for mathematics. Her local and national work with Bob Moses and the Algebra Project, for over thirty years, has influenced and sustained her ongoing commitment to access and equity for all adults and all children in mathematics, where ambitious teaching and learning are a civil right.
Arusha Hollister
Arusha Hollister has been developing elementary mathematics curriculum and writing and facilitating professional development since she joined TERC in 2003. She is an author of both the 2nd and 3rd edition of the Investigations curriculum. Arusha creates and co-creates professional development focused on teaching in a way that supports elementary students in developing a deep understanding of mathematics and encourages them to rely on their own understandings to solve problems and, increasingly, on addressing issues of equity in elementary mathematics classrooms. Before working at TERC, Arusha was a classroom teacher in elementary schools in New York City and Boston, and a math coach in the Boston Public Schools.
Megan Murray
Megan Murray joined TERC in 1994. Since that time, she has been involved with the development and writing of all three editions of the Investigations curriculum; developed and led a variety of professional development experiences focused on mathematics teaching and learning in the elementary grades; wrote a book about engaging parents as partners in improving math teaching and learning; and participated in a research project that looked at the intersection of math, computer games, and gender. She is committed to the work of thinking about what it takes to create and sustain equitable learning communities in elementary math classrooms.
Susan Jo Russell (Emeritus)
Dr. Susan Jo Russell was an elementary classroom teacher, a math coach, a university instructor, and, for over 40 years, a senior researcher at the Education Research Collaborative at TERC in Cambridge, MA. She co-directed the original development of the K-5 mathematics curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data and Space, and the professional development series, Developing Mathematical Ideas. Publications include three books, co-authored with long-time collaborator Dr. Deborah Schifter and others: 1) Connecting Arithmetic and Algebra: Strategies for Building Algebraic Thinking in the Elementary Grades, 2) But Why Does It Work?: Mathematical Argument in the Elementary Classroom, and 3) Interweaving Equitable Participation and Deep Mathematics: Building Community in the Elementary Classroom, a text and video resource for educators based on a partnership with teachers in Boston Public Schools.
Annie Sussman
Since joining TERC in 2015, Annie has worked on several research projects and on the development and writing of the 3rd edition of Investigations in Number, Data and Space. Currently, she designs and facilitates professional development to support mathematics teaching and learning. She is also part of a team researching content, resources, and pedagogical strategies to best support teaching about climate and equity across widely diverse school and community contexts. Annie is a lecturer at Mount Holyoke College where she teaches graduate courses in the Mathematics Teacher Leadership program. She is a former classroom teacher with special interest in teacher leadership and in thinking about how student and teacher reflection can inform the creation of equitable learning communities.