Hi there.

I'm Emmett Speed (he/they), an enthusiastic advocate for equitable math education. I have a Ph.D. in Educational Neuroscience from Utah State University and over 10 years of experience in educational research, program management, and data analysis. I care about making math education more culturally responsive and evidence-based, and about turning messy data into something actually useful for decision-makers.

I'm currently a Senior Education Research Analyst at the Kansas State Department of Education, where I work on longitudinal student data modeling, federal accountability reporting, program evaluation, and statewide survey design. I also consult for the University of Houston on a grant-funded research project.

My research focuses on numerical cognition in linguistically and culturally diverse communities, particularly how language and culture shape mathematical learning among Indigenous populations. My dissertation, "An Exploratory Study of the Vertical SNARC Effect in Mayan Numerals: Effects of Language Transparency and Reading Direction", involved teaching the Mayan number system to investigate how unfamiliar numerical systems affect cognitive processing.

Outside of work, I volunteer with the International Rescue Committee, play tabletop roleplaying games, cross-stitch, birdwatch, write haiku, and spend as much time as possible on a snowboard.

'Hand coded' badge. This site is written by hand in HTML and CSS

This webpage is representative of my philosophy of iterative learning, and as such is always under active construction. I am engaging in web dev as a hobby in my free time and will be updating this as I learn rather than keeping it under wraps until it's pretty. After all, "perfect" is the enemy of "done"!

Currently working on

Getting settled into my new position as a Senior Education Research Analyst
Learning front-end development through Codecademy
Building a Projects page for this site
Saving the world via math education

Key Skills

Data Analysis & Visualization: R, SQL, SPSS, Tableau, Excel & Google Sheets, GitHub, statistical analysis, database management, data quality assurance, investigative data analysis
Program & Project Management: program and project management, grant writing & management, stakeholder engagement, vendor & contractor coordination, change management
Research & Education: curriculum design & evaluation, K–12 education, educational assessment, instructional design, learning theory, experimental design, EEG, fNIRS, eye-tracking
Leadership & Communication: team leadership & mentorship, public speaking, volunteer management, fluency in Spanish
Web Development: HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Transgender pride flag — Emmett uses he/they pronouns