Lawanda Cummings
Director - Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence Dean's Office- Education
Ph.D. in Community Psychology, Georgia State University
M.A. in Community Psychology, Georgia State University
B.A. in Psychology, Georgia State University
- Specializations
Cummings has published articles on mentoring best practices for African American girls, transformational learning for minority students, non-cognitive learning factors and modalities for success for Black female college students in STEM. She also owns and operates COMmunity-Metrics, LLC, a consultancy for program evaluation, educational research and assessment development.
- Biography
Lawanda Cummings earned a doctorate in Community Psychology from Georgia State University. Her research and teaching focused on community mentoring initiatives and school support structures that promote academic and psychological development among ethnic or gender minority students. Through the Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence, she worked as a grant writer and project director for the DREAMS mentoring initiative. For that mentoring program, she was awarded a $436,000 grant by Americorp to further the program’s scope and provide volunteer support for math and science teachers in the Atlanta Public School system.
As a faculty member at Paine College, Cummings was awarded an NSF grant for $346, 000 to investigate the educational processes associated with African American women’s inclusion in STEM career fields. She also spearheaded the Paine College: Informing, Developing and Educating through Active Learning (PC: IDEAL) grant, funded by SAMHSA for $877,000 to address HIV/HCV and Substance Abuse prevention among 18-24 year-olds in the Augusta area.
Cummings was an Assistant Professor of Psychology and chair of the Social Sciences Department for four years at Paine College before transitioning to the University of the Virgin Islands as a visiting scholar and director of STEM education research and workforce development. In this position, she managed the workforce development component of the Virgin Islands Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (VI-EPSCoR) grant. She was also the director of the Florida-Caribbean Louis Stokes Regional Center for Excellence, which develops customized mindset interventions to promote URM inclusion in STEM.
- Publications
Bowen, D., Cummings, L., & Monrose Mills, N. (2023). The Role of Agency for K12 STEM Teachers in the United States Virgin Islands Post Hurricane. Handbook of Caribbean and African Studies in Education: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Jones, N.A., Cummings, L, Guannel, M., & Abdallah, S. (2018). Reforming science education to a place-based focus: Cultural congruence and 21st Century Skill Development. Paper presented at the Arts, Humanities, Social Science and Education Conference, https://artshumanitieshawaii.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Jones-Nastassia-2018-AHSE-HUIC.pdf
Adams, C.L. & Cummings, L. (2017). Standing on the box you’ve built: Using technology and learning tools to build knowledge and agency among 21st-century students at HBCUs. Faculty Resource Network National Symposium Journal. Retrieved from http://www.nyu.edu/frn/publications/advancing.social.justice.classroom.to.community/index.html
Cummings, L. & Lindsay-Dennis, L.A. (In press). A Sister Had to Show Me: Sisterhood and Womanhood for African American Female Adolescents in Gender and Race Matched Mentoring Relationships. The Negro Educational Review.
Lindsay-Dennis, L. A. & Cummings, L. (2013). The ABCs of doing gender: Culturally situated non-cognitive factors and African American girls. In D. Davis-Maye, A.D. Yarber, & T.E. Perry (Eds.), what the village gave me: Conceptualizations of Womanhood (pp. 73-90). Lanham, MA: University Press of America.
Lindsay-Dennis, Cummings, L. & McClendon, S.C. (2011). Toward culturally responsive mentoring paradigm for urban African American girls. A special issue on Black girls/Black Women, Gender, Families: A Black Women’s Studies Journal.
Cummings, L. & McClendon, S. (May 2010). Inclusion and communication strategies among partners within the DREAMS initiative: PDS schools, parents, and an urban university. PDS Partners Newsletter, 6 (1).
Holsey, C. N., & Cummings, L. (2008). Evaluating a residential asthma camp program and ways to increase physical activity. The Journal of Pediatric Nursing, 34 (6).
Mobley, C.N., Celano, M., Cummings, L., Linzer, J., Phillips, K. (2005). Predicting Asthma Morbidity at Three Month Follow-up among Low-Income African American Children with Severe Persistent Asthma. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.