Brigitte Morin, 2023 Michigan Tech Diversity Award winner, is pictured smiling in her classroom. (Photo courtesy of Michigan Tech University)

HOUGHTON — Brigitte Morin’s biological sciences courses are intentionally designed to make every Husky in her lab or classroom feel welcome to come as they are. This inclusive approach to teaching has earned Morin the 2023 Michigan Technological University Diversity Award.

“This new generation of students is really holding educators accountable for doing the work, which I think is excellent,” said Morin.

As an associate teaching professor, Morin’s classrooms are a microcosm of her efforts to expand Michigan Tech’s capacity for inclusive teaching. Her courses are as challenging as any at Michigan Tech.

But her students consistently rave about the 2018 Distinguished Teaching Award winner’s ability to make everyone feel welcome and included in her classroom, said nominator Michael Meyer, a teaching professor of physics and past director of faculty development at Michigan Tech’s William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning.

“Despite carrying one of the heaviest teaching loads on campus, Brigitte has never turned down the opportunity to do the work. It’s something she makes room for because it’s her passion, and her efforts are working. She is slowly but surely changing the teaching culture on campus,” he said.

“Brigitte has been doing the hard work of expanding Michigan Tech’s capacity for inclusive teaching since she arrived on campus,” Meyer said, adding that Morin’s video vignette on unconscious bias, recorded when she was a speaker and facilitator at a 2016 CTL Lunch and Learn on inclusive classrooms, has been viewed by hundreds of teaching assistants and faculty.

He said it serves as a primer for instructors just starting to explore how instructional examples, language and assumptions about students affect their sense of belonging in classrooms.

In 2021, when the CTL decided to form a team to facilitate live sessions that accompanied the National Science Foundation-funded online inclusive STEM Teaching Project (iSTP), Brigitte was first on Meyer’s list.

The program, which helps instructors consider and implement inclusive teaching practices in their classrooms, has since expanded to eight trained facilitators, reaching more than 50 Michigan Tech faculty members, teaching assistants and administrators.

About the award

Established in 2014, Michigan Tech’s Diversity Award showcases university faculty and staff who demonstrate exemplary commitment to initiatives that forward diversity and inclusion.

Their contributions come in many forms, including recruitment, retention, teaching, research, multicultural programming, cultural competency and community outreach.

The Diversity Award winner receives a $2,500 award and is honored during the annual Faculty Awards celebration in September.

All are welcome to submit Diversity Award nominations, which are due by late April each year.

Nominator Sarah LewAllen, practicum coordinator of Michigan Tech’s Medical Laboratory Science program, praised Morin’s help with coordinating the biological science department’s participation in Project Biodiversify, an online workshop that highlights the diversity inherent in biology.

Morin is a 2006 MLS alumna and also serves as director for the Biology Learning Center. She has facilitated Safe Place training at MTU as the faculty advisor for Keweenaw Pride since 2016.

She has also worked with the Michigan College and University Program (MiCUP), which brings students to Tech from Delta, Grand Rapids, Wayne County and Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa community colleges to campus for a seven-week research or project and overall perspective on the university experience. “Brigitte mentored a first-generation college student through her project. She made such a positive impression that this student is now enrolled at Tech in the Medical Laboratory Science program,” LewAllen said.

Morin’s experience and efforts to promote and celebrate diversity at institutional, departmental and classroom levels funnel down to impactful interactions with her students.

“Brigitte is a mentor for countless students who have diverse and often marginalized identities,” LewAllen said. “If you walk near her office, you will likely see students there chatting about their courses and their everyday lives.”

“The safe space that Brigitte creates for her students is absolutely an essential part of our department. We are profoundly grateful for the work she does.”