Megan Wawro
American mathematician
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Megan Jean Wawro is an American mathematician and scholar of mathematics education who works as a professor of mathematics at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on linear algebra in undergraduate education including both inquiry-based learning for linear algebra and the applications of linear algebra in teaching and understanding quantum mechanics.[1]
Education and career
Wawro majored in mathematics at Cedarville University, a Baptist school in Cedarville, Ohio; she graduated in 2000. After working as a secondary school art and mathematics teacher in Ohio and Switzerland, she continued her studies at Miami University of Ohio, where she received a master's degree in mathematics in 2005. She completed a Ph.D. in mathematics and science education in 2011 through a joint program of the University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University.[2] Her doctoral dissertation, Individual and Collective Analyses of the Genesis of Student Reasoning Regarding the Invertible Matrix Theorem in Linear Algebra, was supervised by Chris Larson Rasmussen.[3]
She joined Virginia Tech as an assistant professor of mathematics in 2011, was promoted to associate professor in 2016, and was promoted again to full professor in 2023.[2]
Recognition
Wawro is a 2016 recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, given "for her outstanding research on students' learning and understanding of key concepts from upper-level undergraduate mathematics, and especially for leveraging pedagogical implications and synergy between mathematics and physics education research on STEM teaching and learning".[4]