About

Claire Wladis, Ph.D., is the Director of the City University of New York (CUNY) [Equity Through Education Research Group, Professor of Mathematics at BMCC/CUNY and of Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. Their research focuses on a wide range of subfields in mathematics education and higher education, with a unifying focus on understanding how educational institutions can better center and adapt to the diverse needs of the students who attend them. This includes research on how students think about core algebra concepts, how we can accurately measure this thinking, and how we can use this information to improve instruction; how our particular conceptualization and implementation of developmental and “college-level” mathematics courses may improve or worsen access to college and STEM degrees; how the availability of online courses may help or hinder degree progress for different groups; how time and energy as resources for college may impact academic and non-academic outcomes in college; how students from groups that have been traditionally marginalized in higher education successfully navigate existing higher education structures; and how institutional culture, policies, and practices may enable or disable different groups (particularly those who have been traditionally marginalized in higher education) from obtaining a college or STEM degree.  

 

They currently lead several NSF-funded projects:

  • [Developing and Validating an Elementary Algebra Concept Inventory,  [National Science Foundation (NSF) EHR Core Grant, $1,500,000: The aim of this project is to generate a calibrated item pool of 200 validated questions that assess conceptual understanding in college algebra. 
  • [Investigating Whether Online Course Offerings Support STEM Degree Progress, E-learning research],  [National Science Foundation (NSF) EHR Core Grant,  $2,466,374: This project will: 1) explore the relationship between online course availability and academic momentum (the number of credits in which a student enrolls) and STEM persistence, with a particular focus on “non-traditional” students; 2) explore the role of student time poverty (i.e. quantity and quality of time available for college) in mediating these patterns; and 3) explore scarcity of alternate course sections as a potential moderating variable in explaining these patterns.
  • [Broadening Narratives about Math Majors: Investigating the Needs and Experiences of Community College Mathematics Majors www.cwladis.com/mathmajors] [National Science Foundation (NSF) EHR Core Grant https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2300725&HistoricalAwards=false] $2,374,279: This project will directly investigate which factors impact student decisions to enroll and persist in mathematics majors in the two-year college context.
  • [Recentering the experiences of STEM majors with dis/abilities in college: Investigating systemic factors that enable/disable students from obtaining formal & informal accommodation Learn more here. [National Science Foundation (NSF) EHR Core Grant, $2,251,904: This project will investigate how higher education structures enable or disable diverse STEM students with dis/abilities.

 

Their current CV can be found here 

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