EDUCATION
On Campus
HOW NEW DEAN LANCE COLLINS FOUND HIS WAY TO CORNELL
It’s the dean’s office at one of the top 10 engineering schools in the world. Lance Collins took the post as the Jo- seph Silbert Dean of Cornell University’s College of Engineering this past fall, but his trip to this place began in the sum- mer of 1976, in an engineering lab on the beautiful campus of Lafayette College, northeast of Bethlehem, Penn. There, the rising senior from West-
T
bury, N.Y., ran programs on a mainframe computer, built structures from Popsicle sticks, and discovered that he was an engineer.
“I was a good math and science student,” Collins said, “but I had no idea what an engineer did until I participated in the Minority Introduction to Engineer- ing (MITE) program. We spent two weeks at Lafayette during the summer before my senior year in high school. I thought I was headed towards chemistry and phys- ics – I was in the chemistry club – but this experience showed me how engineers can impact society.”
Running a rudimentary lunar landing game, using actual parameters of gravity and fuel to simulate bringing the lander in safely, gave Collins an appreciation for the engineering disciplines and re- channeled his intellectual energies toward acquiring a top-notch education so he could solve similar problems in the real world.
It wasn’t entirely foreign turf for Collins. His older brothers had paved the way into the top tier of schools by at- tending Yale, while his mother reinforced his aspirations through a no-nonsense regimen of “sit down and study” and “there are no excuses because you can do
www.blackengineer.com
he journey has brought him here, to a comfortable mod- ern office overlooking an Ivy League campus in Ithaca, N.Y.
it.” Collins applied to the top engineering schools—Cor- nell, University of Pennsyl- vania, Princeton University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology—and was ac- cepted to all. However, these positive motivations had to compete with negativity from some who could not believe in a student like Lance. “There were people I talked to who basically said, ‘Aren’t you reaching a little too high …’,” leaving Collins’ race hanging in the air, unsaid. “But I had already been accepted into Princeton.”
by Matthew Montague
mmontague@ccgmag.com
Lance Collins
Still, Collins’ first year at Princeton tested his confidence. “My freshman year was almost a disaster. There were students from elite high schools who were far ahead of me in subjects like calculus and physics. I was getting B’s and C’s and I wasn’t used to that. I had to gain a lot of maturity and I had to ask for help to learn how to study and how to prepare for ex- ams. I had to learn how to succeed in this new and demanding environment.” Collins said his belief in his ability never wavered and when his class entered its sophomore year, the playing field suddenly was leveled. “It was a fantastic relief,” he said. “because the material was new to all of us.”
And it was in chemistry class that a light went on.
“I had great preparation for chem- istry in high school,” he said. “Our club was run by my first mentor, Sol Medoff. We studied biochemistry, and learned how the body worked. Those were some really advanced topics for high school students. He made me dream big and think about
earning a doctorate and making research my career even while I was in high school.”
After graduating from Princeton with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemi- cal engineering, Collins made his way to a master’s in engineering, and then an engineering doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. “I was keen on getting to the highest level,” he said. “It was the permanence of the achievement that drove me. My mother told me that knowledge is power, and no one can take it away.” While in graduate school, Collins had the good fortune of landing a Cooperative Research Fellowship at Bell Laboratories. It was a chance to work in a dynamic, creative environment that has come to be regarded as the engineering equivalent of the Harlem Renaissance for African American engineers. “You were surrounded by people who looked like you, who had similar stories,” he said. “There were busloads of people heading off to internships. Everyone was outstanding. There were students from MIT, from Berkeley. It was
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