Calli Shekell, PhD

Dr. Calli Shekell is an Assistant Professor of STEM education at Pennsylvania Western University in Clarion, PA. She teaches a variety of STEM-oriented courses, including science methods and technology-oriented courses. Her research interests include understanding and supporting pre-service teachers to develop skills to engage their students in argumentation and sense-making in STEM classrooms.  At the start of her career, Calli was a high school mathematics teacher teaching students in grades 6-12 in Florida and Pennsylvania. Through that, she became interested in the work teachers do to support student sense-making in STEM classes. More recent work has focused on how digital simulations can be used as a tool to support pre-service teachers to develop such practices. For this work, Calli, along with colleagues at ETS led by Jamie Mikeska, earned the National Technology Leadership Initiative Award from the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators in 2026. You can learn more about that work here. Calli earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Clarion University before pursuing her doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh.