Profile

Grace Pai, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Elementary and Early Childhood department at Queens College in the City University of New York (CUNY). Her 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, and she has written op-eds on fighting anti-blackness and discrimination against the Asian community that have appeared in the Daily News and Inside Higher Ed. She has led professional development workshops and webinars on culturally responsive pedagogy and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), and is an Andrew W. Mellon Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) Pedagogy Co-Leader in Fall 2022. She is also a past winner of the Margie Hobbs award from the American Mathematics Association of Two-Year Colleges, as well as co-PI of the US State Department-funded Stevens Initiative Grant that connects students from 5 CUNY colleges to students in the Middle East and North Africa through virtual exchange. 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 of CUNY's University Advisory Council on Diversity (UACD).

As a former two-time Peace Corps Volunteer in Bangladesh and South Africa, math teacher in the NYC DOE, and 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. 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. 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. Her research interests include mathematics education, culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy, global and experiential learning, and program evaluation.