Mathematics Research Area

Dr. Alice Petillo’s research focuses on Mathematics Education. She conducts research on teacher education; informal learning events such as STEM Festivals. The intersectionality of mathematics and the fine arts is a particular area of interest. Additionally, she develops courses at Marymount university supporting students through co-requisite remediation in mathematics. This curricular innovation has been presented at conferences and extended to other courses. She has also collaborated with the Malek School of Nursing on BSN Nursing Student’s Confidence Levels with Medication Dosage Calculations.

Dr. Laurie Lenz’s research interests are in Mathematics education and inquiry-based learning. Her interest in mathematics education began as an undergraduate student developing a series of inquiry-based computer labs for calculus. She is the co-author of an inquiry-based calculus book, currently in its second edition, and an inquiry-based college algebra book. Dr. Lenz has facilitated multiple inquiry-based learning workshops across the country for both college and high school teachers. She conducted research via classroom videotaping and student interviews to evaluate the effect of inquiry-based learning on calculus students.

Dr. Jacquie Rische’s research interest is mathematical modeling. She looks at cognitive psychology studies on how humans learn the language. She creates mathematical models that replicate these studies. By looking at the results of her model, she can shed new light on the learning process. She also works with students on agent-based modeling. This is a type of model where you program a computer simulation to look at the interactions of “agents” (according to the rules you determine).

Dr. Danielle O’Donnol’s research interests are in knot theory, spatial graphs, contact topology, DNA topology and applications of topology to biochemistry. In these areas she focuses on projects about unknotting numbers of embedded graphs, knotting in DNA, Legendrian graphs, developing invariants for graphs, spatial graph Floer homology, and intrinsic properties of graphs.