Susan Empson

Empson majored in art at Queens College, Charlotte in North Carolina, with a minor in mathematics; she graduated summa cum laude in 1983. After two years teaching mathematics in Morocco through the Peace Corps, she became a mathematics teacher at A. Philip Randolph Campus High School in New York City in 1987. While in New York, she also went to Teachers College, Columbia University for a master's degree in mathematics education and a minor in educational technology, completed in 1988.[2]

In 1990, she moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison for continuing graduate study in mathematics education. She completed her Ph.D. there in 1994, with a minor in cognitive science in education.[2] Her dissertation, The Development of Children's Fraction Thinking in a First-grade Classroom, was supervised by Thomas P. Carpenter.[3] She also worked at the university as a lecturer from 1993 to 1995, and stayed on as a post-doctoral researcher from 1994 to 1996.[2]

In 1996, she took a faculty position at the University of Texas at Austin, as an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She remained there until 2016, progressing through the faculty ranks, until retiring in 2016 as professor emerita. In that year she moved to the University of Missouri, as a professor in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum, Richard Miller endowed chair of mathematics education, and associate director of the Institute for Reimagining and Researching STEM Education.[2] She has since retired again, as professor emerita.[1]