Grace Pai, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education at Queens College in the City University of New York (CUNY). Her interdisciplinary scholarship, which expands beyond mathematics education, examines local and global educational equity across various fields through a combination of quantitative (ranging from rigorous, causal inference methods to survey research), qualitative, and historical research methods. Her current research focuses on culturally responsive and sustaining math education, math affinity, and fostering digital equity in computational thinking. Her past research on out-of-school children in sub-Saharan Africa has been supported by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and featured on NPR’s Academic Minute. Her public scholarship also includes writing op-eds on fighting anti-blackness and discrimination against the Asian community that have appeared in the Daily News and Inside Higher Ed.

As a former math teacher in the NYC DOE and Assistant Professor of math and interdisciplinary studies at Guttman Community College, she has experience teaching a wide range of courses and student populations grounded in principles of cultural responsiveness and active learning. At Guttman, she was also the director of international education for which she won the President’s Award for Community Engagement. She was awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) Faculty Fellowship and Pedagogy Co-Leader role for her exemplary engagement in improving teaching and learning in higher education.

She has also led professional development workshops and webinars on culturally responsive pedagogy and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), resulting in her winning the Margie Hobbs award from the American Mathematics Association of Two-Year Colleges and becoming a co-PI of the $750,000 US State Department funded Stevens Initiative Grant that connects students from five CUNY colleges to students in the Middle East and North Africa through virtual exchange (2021-2023).

Her service work centers around her firm belief in enacting equity, fiscal responsibility, and shared governance in higher education. She currently serves as an elected member of CUNY’s University Faculty Senate 2022-23 Executive Committee, CUNY’s Budget Advisory Committee, and appointed member on CUNY’s University Advisory Council on Diversity (UACD).

Prior to joining CUNY, she worked as the lead evaluator of the citywide College Access for All initiative at the New York City Department of Education, and as a math teacher development specialist for the Eastern Cape Department of Education in South Africa through the US Peace Corps. She holds a Ph.D. in International Education with a concentration in applied statistics from New York University, an M.Ed. in Secondary School Mathematics from Brooklyn College, an Ed. M. in Human Development and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a B.S. from the Stern School of Business at New York University.