2022 Metcalf Award Recipient: Leslie Dietiker

Leslie Dietiker is an associate professor of mathematics education at Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. For nearly a decade, she has inspired prospective and practicing teachers to spark a passion for math in their students.

She deftly combines collaborative classroom inquiry, immersive fieldwork, and dedicated mentorship. The result engages students and elicits curiosity and wonder, qualities they bring to classrooms around the country.

Professor Dietiker’s popular “mathematical tours” of Boston, which she helped develop with colleagues and doctoral students over the years, are but one example of that engagement. Determining percentages of city land devoted to green space or comparing the length of the Boston Marathon course to that of the number of trucks used for a public works project present models that can be replicated in any community.

Student evaluations are routinely effusive and include praise such as “thought-provoking,” “enriching,” and “inspiring.” One student wrote that Professor Dietiker “had many suggestions I was able to implement right away to improve my teaching.”

According to her program director, Professor Dietiker aims to “get her teacher-students to rethink their 12 years of dull and disconnected mathematics lessons and imagine a K–12 curriculum specifically designed to engage and intrigue students.”

Professor Dietiker is an elected executive committee member of the International Society for Design and Development in Education and leads professional development for teachers in school districts in Greater Boston. She has won numerous grants and awards, including National Board Certification for Teaching Mathematics for her work at the high school level and a prestigious CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation.

She earned a BS in mathematics, with emphasis in teaching, from California Polytechnic State University and a PhD in mathematics education from Michigan State University. Prior to her work at BU, Professor Dietiker taught math and computer science at a public high school in San Francisco for 17 years. A frequent panelist and presenter at national conferences, she has contributed to several books and mathematics curricula.