My research interests include literature and culture, humanities and STEM integration, and engineering education. These areas are unified by broad concerns for justice, inclusion, and social progress. My literary scholarship considers the ways literature helps to advance social progress and justice. My educational scholarship is aimed at advancing more inclusive, fair, and effective education for all people. 

WPI's unusually trans-disciplinary and collaborative environment inspires my teaching, research, and service. I collaborate with engineering faculty, students, and middle school STEM teachers to develop integrative classroom curricula and materials for college, high school, and middle school classrooms (Women's Impact Network grant). Our team has designed role-playing games (RPGs) to teach engineering and science within a rich cultural context that attends to historical particulars. We call these RPGs "Humanitarian Engineering Past & Present." We've also studied the climate in engineering education for LGBTQ+ students (NSF# 1640499). 

I was part of the WPI team that developed and implemented sweeping changes to the status of contingent faculty at WPI. Our work resulted in the country's first tenure track for teaching faculty along with secured contracts for non tenure-track faculty and full participation in faculty governance for full-time faculty. Those policy changes earned WPI a Delphi Award from the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California.

I teach humanities courses in literature, gender, sexuality, and women's studies, cultural studies, and global studies; Humanities Inquiry Seminars in literary and cultural studies; and Great Problems Seminars in Humanitarian Engineering. With David DiBiasio (Chemical Engineering), I co-direct WPI's program in Liberal Arts and Engineering. I teach literature in Worcester's Clemente Course in the Humanities. Like most WPI faculty, I also advise IQPs on and off campus.