Elise Lockwood

Professor

Department of Mathematics

Elise Lockwood

Professor

Department of Mathematics

Biography

Professor Lockwood received her Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from Portland State University in 2011. Before coming to Oregon State University, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she was mentored by Dr. Eric Knuth and Dr. Amy Ellis. In 2019, Lockwood was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway, and she maintains a professional connection with colleagues there. From 2021-2024, she served as a Program Officer in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation. She is currently Co-Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education.

Research

Lockwood's primary research interest involves undergraduate mathematics education, particularly studying how students think about and learn combinatorial topics. She has put forth a model of student's combinatorial thinking that especially emphasizes the role of sets of outcomes in effective counting. Other research in this area includes exploring student-generated connections among counting problems through a lens of actor-oriented transfer and determining the effectiveness of systematic listing in counting. Through two NSF-funded grants, she is currently investigating students’ generalizing activity as they solve advanced counting problems, and she is studying ways in which having students engage in computational activity can help them solve counting problems more successfully. Two additional collaborations and areas of research include studying the role of examples in proof and considering the relationship between mathematical content and mathematical practices at all levels.