Dr. Sibrina Collins 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.
Curriculum Development
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.
Research and Scholarship
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.
Grant Writing
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.
Teaching
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.
Dr. Sibrina Collins
scollins@ltu.edu
248.204.2227
Storytelling 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.
Course Based Undergraduate Research Experience
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
King Chavez Parks (KCP)
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.
LTU Michigan College/University Partnership (MiCUP) Program
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.
DAPCEP
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.
