Rachael M. Welder is a Research Scholar in the Mathematics Education Collective at Boise State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics with an emphasis in Mathematics Education from Montana State University in 2007, after receiving undergraduate and master’s degrees in Mathematics. Prior to joining BSU, she held mathematics education faculty positions at Hunter College, The City University of New York (2007-2015), Western Washington University (2015-2019), Texas A&M University (2019-2022), and the University of Nevada, Reno (2022-2024).

Dr. Welder has over 20 years of experience teaching a variety of graduate and undergraduate mathematics content and methods courses for prospective and inservice K-12 teachers and mathematics courses for a broader audience. She specializes in content courses for prospective elementary and middle grades (K-8) teachers of mathematics.

Dr. Welder’s research focuses on informing and supporting the preparation and professional development of K-8 teachers and the mathematics teacher educators with whom they work. She is particularly interested in the ways in which teachers develop deep, specialized content and pedagogical knowledge and how this knowledge affects teaching practices and, consequently, students’ development of conceptual mathematics knowledge. She is currently involved in project RANGE, an NSF-funded, cross-institutional effort to engage rural middle school mathematics teachers in high-quality professional development while studying outcomes for teachers, students, and teaching communities.

For more information please see publications, presentations, and teaching experience or view her academic research profile on ResearchGate. Information regarding her work with the Task Masters research team can be found on their website.