CEO - STEM in Action

Our CEO has led over $30 million in STEM education research and programming, designing immersive development opportunities for K12 students, teachers, and families across the country.

Dr. Julie Cwikla has designed, led, and studied JROTC cadet learning and development related to military and civilian workforce pathways, professional learning for mathematics faculty in higher education, directed out-of-school interdisciplinary STEM programs for middle school students and their families, examined very young children's intuitive understanding of fraction concepts, studied teachers' use of technology in STEM classes, designed interdisciplinary lessons for middle and high school classrooms, developed an educational research program to help organize and align undergraduate programs in engineering, and studied growing algae on Mars.

The mission of her work is to investigate questions of national and international significance, by securing research funds to benefit and improve STEM learning opportunities.

Dr. Cwikla holds a doctoral degree in Mathematics Education, with a minor in Applied Mathematics from the University of Delaware and studied under the direction of Dr. James Hiebert.  She also holds a master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences where she studied the Extended Non-Linear Schrödinger equation under the direction of Dr. Robert Kohn and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Chemistry from Fairfield University where she worked closely with the late Dr. Ben Fine a brilliant mathematician, chess champion, a boxer, a fiction author, and an incredible mentor.

Julie has been awarded funding from the National Science Foundation, NASA, the U.S. Department of Education, the Department of Defense, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, among others.  She is also the 2019 Ada Lovelace STEM Educator.

She is the author of over 50 publications, 2 books, book chapters, journal articles, and monographs and presented her research at conferences around the globe. She is also author of Good to Great Grant Writing: Secrets to Success.