Dr. Lawanda Cummings earned a doctorate in Community Psychology from Georgia State University. Her research and teaching have 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 has 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, Dr. 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. Dr. Cummings was an Assistant Professor of Psychology and chair of the Social Sciences Department for 4 years at Paine College before transitioning to the University of the Virgin Islands as a visiting scholar and now Director of Education Research. In this position, she provides leadership to the workforce development component of the Virgin Islands Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (VI-EPSCoR) grant. She also is the Do-Director of the Florida-Caribbean Louis Stokes Regional Center for Excellence which develops customized mindset interventions to promote URM inclusion in STEM.
Dr. 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.