Luisa Rosu

Luisa serves as the Interim Director of Research for the Center for Family and Community Engaged STEAAM (FACES), bringing over 15 years of experience in responsive evaluation, with a focus on values engagement educational approach. A former mathematics teacher, she has contributed to research and evaluation projects, underlining the contextual power of robust pedagogies in the classroom and educational interactions where social norms are yet to be established.

She began her research journey as part of evaluation teams for initiatives like the NSF GK-12 outreach program and the Mathematics English Technology Education Resources (METER) project under the Illinois Professional Learners’ Partnership (IPLP). As a coordinator at the Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation (CIRCE), Luisa coordinated international collaborations and contributed to evaluation reports for the Open Society Institute’s early childhood programs in Eastern Europe. She also organized seminars for the Iberico-American initiative (RIIE), addressing the evaluation of teaching quality in higher education. Since 2015, Luisa has directed the I-STEM Education Initiative at UIUC, conducting various evaluations from STEM campus initiatives (SIIP) to large multi-institutional centers (POETS, I-MRSEC, QCB). In 2017, she initiated a pilot multidisciplinary STEM program for underrepresented high school students in Champaign-Urbana, partnering with 10 STEM departments at UIUC.

Her research explores the intersection of continuing education, informal learning and increasing diversity in STEM programs through inclusive evaluation methods. She received a CORE Early Career Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award in 2014 and the YWCA Leadership Award in 2016 for her contributions to STEM education. Dr. Rosu holds a Ph.D. in Education from UIUC, an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Southern California, and a Master’s in Real and Complex Analysis from the University of Bucharest, Romania.