Maria (Mia) Ong, Ph.D., is a Senior Researcher on MSPnet. Her work focuses on the qualitative aspects of electronic communities. She also studies the social dynamics in physics and engineering programs in higher education. Ong's projects include an NSF study on gender and project-based learning in introductory undergraduate physics, mathematics, and engineering courses and an NSF project synthesizing research literature on women of color in STEM. Before coming to TERC, Ong was a postdoctoral fellow and instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Wellesley College. She has additional experience as a facilitator of a mathematics online community with the Math Forum, as the coordinator of an undergraduate physics program at U.C. Berkeley, and as an elementary school-level mathematics curriculum developer and teacher.
Qualitative methods and analysis; communities of practice theory; project-based learning; gender, race/ethnicity, and STEM disciplines; sociology of education
Ong, M. "Cultivate Passion and Possibility: Make Explicit and Challenge Cultural Messages of Who Can, and Can't, Do Science." In Everyday Antiracism, edited by Mica Pollock. New York: New Press. (Forthcoming,2006).
Ong, M. "Body Projects of Young Women of Color in Physics: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Science." Social Problems, 52(4), 593-617 (2005).
Budil, K. S., Daniels, K. E., Daniels-Race, T., Eblen-Zayas, M., Hartline, B. K., Hazeltine, R., Hodari, A. K., Horton, K. R., Ivie, R., Kay, L., Martinez-Miranda, L. J., Michelman-Ribeiro, A., Ong, M., Rudati, J. I., Valentine, J., Whitten, B., Williams, E., and Zastavker, Y. V. "Women in Physics in the United States: A Progress Report." In Women in Physics: Second IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics, edited by B. K. Hartline and A. Michelman-Ribeiro. Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics (Conference Proceedings 795), 175-178 (2005).
Ong, M. "Understanding the Dearth of Women in Science," Harvard Community Resource, July 1, p. 3 (2005).
Ong, M. "Playing with In/Visibility: How Minority Women Gain Power from the Margins of Science Culture," in Women in Higher Education, 10(11), 42-44 (2001).
