Dr. Wisam Bukiata is serving as the Executive Director of STEM Education for LTU’s College of Arts and Sciences (CoAS). In this leadership role, she will collaborate and partner with CoAS faculty, students, and staff, and focus on the following areas, namely Curriculum Development , Research and Scholarship , Grant Writing , and Teaching . This role also allows for collaboration with other programs across campus. Dr. Collins also has an appointment as Associate Professor of Practice in Chemistry in CoAS.
How do we effectively leverage the cutting-edge research from CoAS faculty to build more effective bridges to historically underrepresented communities and K-12 schools?
Dr. Collins will partner with CoAS faculty in all three departments to develop lesson plans based on published research to engage current LTU students in the classroom, which will further enhance CoAS initiatives to build a more inclusive curriculum and extend our CRE program.
Professor Name | Project Title | |
1 | Shannon Timmons | A Search for Safer Plastics: Synthesis of Bisphenol A Analogs for Toxicity Testing |
2 | Meng Zhou | From Greenhouse Gas to Green Fields: Pincer Copper(II) Catalysts Convert CO2 into Urea Fertilizer |
3 | Irfana Muqbil | From in-silico screening to in-vitro testing: identifying lead compounds for anticancer activity |
4 | Aleksandra Kuzmanov | Environment and Reproductive Health: Exploring the Effects of Plastics on Fertility Using the Model Organism Caenorhabditis elegans |
5 | Yelena vaynberg | Exploring the Intersection of Mathematics and Engineering for the Design and Fabrication of Kinetic 3D Printing Sculptures |
6 | Matthew Johnston | Exploring Mathematical Models of Infectious Disease Spread |
7 | Bruce Pell | Incorporating Wastewater-based Epidemiology into Models of Disease Spread |
8 | Franco Delogu | Applying immersive virtual reality to neuropsychology |
9 | Paul Jaussen | Detroit Working Class Literature |
10 | Angela Morris | Research in nursing methods |
11 | Tao Liu | Play with Voxels – Volumetric Analysis Using 3D CNN |
Dr. Collins’ research and scholarship are uniquely positioned at the intersection of STEM education, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and storytelling to address equity in STEM with several publications in high-impact journals. Recent articles have been published in Nature Chemistry , the Bulletin for the History of Chemistry , and Nature . Most recently, she served as editor of the new book, African American Chemists: Academia, Industry and Social Entrepreneurship , which was published in May 2021 by the American Chemical Society.
Dr. Collins is serving as PI for several STEM education grants targeting K-16 audiences. She will partner with CoAS faculty and staff to secure STEM education grants, where we can provide financial support for current Blue Devils and future Blue Devils .
During Spring 2021 and 2022, Dr. Collins has taught CURE/CRE social science seminar courses with the themes, “Science, Gender and Race” and “Equity and History of Science” with engineering and architecture students in the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Communication.
torytelling in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) provides resources for educators to incorporate storytelling into their courses and engage students in the classroom. Storytelling in STEM education as a pedagogical tool provides an alternative learning format for students to discover more about the people behind the STEM innovations that impact our societies. Our central research question is: how does storytelling, as a pedagogical tool influence STEM identity, persistence and commitment to the STEM disciplines? This research project is led by Dr. Sibrina Collins, Executive Director of LTU’s Marburger STEM Center; Dr. Michelle Nelson, Postdoctoral Researcher, College of Arts and Sciences, Lawrence Technological University; and Dr. Tiffany Steele, Assistant Professor, University of Rochester.
C ourse B ased U ndergraduate R esearch E xperience
A key goal for the LTU’s Marburger STEM Center is to revolutionize LTU’s undergraduate STEM education initiatives.
Course-based research experience (CRE) or Course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE), is a novel intervention in undergraduate education.
We develop and implement pedagogical methodology for integrating research in undergraduate courses in different disciplines to enhance LTU education.
Our efforts have led to several peer-reviewed publications with LTU student co-authors in high-impact journals.
Partners
Lawrence Tech is proud to continue our partnership with the state of Michigan's King Chavez Parks (KCP) Initiative to expand support for students who are financially or academically at risk, non-traditional or first-generation, or from traditionally underserved populations. The program is named in honor of civil rights pioneers Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Rosa Parks.
The State of Michigan has renewed the Lawrence Technological University MiCUP Grant entitled Community College STEM Bridge Program through Course-Based Research.
This effort is in collaboration with Henry Ford Community College (HFCC) and Macomb Community College (MCC) to engage students enrolled at HFCC and MCC through faculty-led workshops focused on various topics including Media Studies, Virtual Reality and Molecules in Medicine.
Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program (DAPCEP) is a Detroit-based non-profit that provides STEM programming to underrepresented metropolitan Detroit youth in kindergarten through 12th grade. Along with its corporate and eight university partners, DAPCEP serves more than 4,000 students each year at no cost to its students. See more information here .
The LTU MICUP Site will host 15 Scholars per summer for six years and will be administered through LTU’s College of Arts and Sciences (CoAS) impacting 90 community college and transfer students. Our project will provide talented community college students (MICUP Research Scholars) with a four-week summer immersive learning summer experiences using diverse technologies such virtual reality (VR), applications of physics, chemistry, mathematics, AI and the Humanities fields.
Please complete the application below for selection as a MICUP Research Scholar! Deadline for application is February 16th .
Generative AI Fiction (Dr. Paula Lauren)
Dive into the future of storytelling with our four week intensive course on Generative AI in Fiction. By the end of the program, not only will you have a profound understanding of the interplay between AI and fiction, but you'll also have a masterpiece that's a blend of human creativity and AI capabilities.
Artificial Intelligence Art (Dr. CJ Chung)
Generative AI art is created by deep learning models that are trained on existing art. The models learn styles of art images and then generate new art when prompted by a human through text. This research project will explore, experiment, and evaluate generative AI art technologies/tools.
Detroit Working Class Literature (Dr. Paul Jaussen)
This project will focus on archival research to examine and explore the way Detroit’s unique culture of factory labor served as a backdrop to literary production.
Societal Impacts of Immersive Virtual Reality (Dr. Franco Delogu)
This research area will provide students with a direct research experience with Virtual Reality research. The experience includes both theory and practical activities and focuses on how VR can impact society via virtual training, testing and assessment.
Chemistry and the Development of a Catalyst (Dr. Meng Zhou)
This project focuses on the synthesis and characterization of a metal catalyst to produce urea fertilizer from carbon dioxide.
Physics in the Community (Dr. Bhubanjyoti Bhattacharya)
This research project is computer based and focused on theoretical particle physics. The Scholars will receive hands-on training in the mathematical and programming software to conduct research.
Mathematical Biology in the Community (Dr. Matthew Johnson and Dr. Bruce Pell)
This experience will include two weeks of instruction followed by two weeks of research focused on mathematical biology. This research project will use mathematical modeling to investigate the impact of COVID-19 within our communities.