She is a professor emerita in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum at the University of Missouri, where she held the Richard Miller endowed chair of mathematics education.
[1] Empson majored in art at Queens College, Charlotte in North Carolina, with a minor in mathematics; she graduated summa cum laude in 1983.
[2] Her dissertation, The Development of Children's Fraction Thinking in a First-grade Classroom, was supervised by Thomas P.
[2] In 1996, she took a faculty position at the University of Texas at Austin, as an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
In that year she moved to the University of Missouri, as a professor in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum, Richard Miller endowed chair of mathematics education, and associate director of the Institute for Reimagining and Researching STEM Education.