Monica’s STEM journey began with her love for patterns as a child and her love for playing with science at the Exploratorium. She also worked on math proofs during informal kitchen conversations with her dad. As an undergraduate, she majored in mathematics and minored in English. She then spent time teaching physical education to preschoolers, substitute teaching math and science at a middle school, tutoring high school students and adults in English as a second language and tutoring technical college students in math and ESL as part of the AmeriCorps program.
She is committed to pursuing and promoting fairness, justice, and dignity but recognizes she still has much to learn. Monica’s research and teaching interests focus on engineering design, mathematical thinking, and computational thinking across formal and informal settings. She is particularly interested in human-centered approaches to design. Monica is also interested in what we can learn from parents and families about the ways that they support learning and engagement in engineering and other STEM activities.
She has investigated this through studies of practicing professionals, undergraduate students and educators, middle school students, elementary school teachers and students and children and families, primarily through video analysis and open-ended interviews. This work is carried out in partnership, most recently with colleagues from Purdue, Imagination Station of Lafayette, the National Society of Black Engineers, TERC, the University of Iowa, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Washington, Virginia Tech and several elementary schools.
Honors & Awards
- Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education Outstanding Research Paper Award, Instructional Strategies to Promote Computational Thinking for Young Learners, 2021
- Fellow, American Society for Engineering Education, 2020
- Lifetime Achievement Award, American Society for Engineering Education Pre-College Engineering Education Division, 2020
- American Society for Engineering Education President’s Award for the Engineering Gift Guide, 2019
- Distinguished Service Award, American Society for Engineering Education Educational Research and Methods Division, 2019
- Best Diversity Paper Award, American Society for Engineering Education Pre-College Division, 2019
- Design Studies Award for the best paper published in 2018 in Design Studies: Timescales and Ideaspace: an Examination of Idea Generation in Design Practice, 2019
- Fellow, Big Ten Academic Leadership Program, 2018-2019
- School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Mentoring Award, 2018
- Fellow, Executive Leadership in Academic Technology and Engineering program, 2015-2016
- Member, Purdue University’s Teaching Academy, 2014
- Team Award for First-Year Engineering Course Development, Purdue University’s College of Engineering Staff Awards of Excellence, 2013
- National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2011
- Team Award for INSPIRE (The Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning), Purdue University’s College of Engineering Faculty Awards of Excellence, 2011
- William Elgin Wickenden Award, 2008
- Apprentice Faculty Grant, Educational Research and Methods division of the American Society for Engineering Education, 2006
Education
- Ph.D., Industrial Engineering, University of Washington, 2006
- MSc, Industrial Engineering, University of Washington, 2002
- BSc, Mathematics, University of Puget Sound, 1998