Her dissertation, entitled "The Mod-2 Cohomology of the Lyons Group", was supervised by Stephen D. Smith[2] In 1996, Umland began teaching in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of New Mexico (UNM).
[2] After being invited to visit the Vermont Mathematics Initiative by Dr. Ken Gross, Umland was set out to improve K–12 teaching and learning.
At UNM, Umland built on her Vermont Mathematics Initiative experience to improve children's learning and achievement.
She and her collaborators reported on the effectiveness of these circles, as well as their history, in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
[5] Umland left UNM in 2016 to work full time as vice president for content development at Illustrative Mathematics (IM), a nonprofit company she co-founded with William McCallum to develop and deliver mathematics content for K-12 teachers.