Biography

Brett McCollum serves as the College of Science’s new Associate Dean of Student Success in STEM. In this role, he will be supporting overall student success across the college, working with faculty and staff to identify and deploy effective strategies. McCollum received his doctorate from Simon Fraser University where he studied novel organosilicon materials using the radioactive positive muon for exotic radiospectroscopic methods. He has published more than 50 papers and book chapters in the fields of chemistry education research and the scholarship on teaching and learning. In 2019, he was inducted into the 3M National Teaching Fellowship, Canada’s highest honor for educational leadership and excellence in teaching in Higher Education.

Prior to joining UCF, McCollum was a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Physics at Mount Royal University and Director of the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Thompson Rivers University. For several years, McCollum was the educational columnist for the Chemical Institute of Canada. He has served on the Canadian Society for Chemistry’s Chem.Educ. Division Executive, as a regional representative for College Chemistry Canada, as a Board member of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and as Chair of SoTL Canada. During 2019- 2022, he held an inaugural Board of Governor’s Teaching Chair, focusing on Educational Leadership. Since 2020, he has served as Editor-in-Chief of The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CJSoTL).

McCollum’s passion for improving the student learning experience was recognized through the MRU Undergraduate Research Supervision Award (2019), the Student Association Open Education Champion Award (2020), and the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations Distinguished Teaching Award (2021). With research experience in both quantitative and qualitative methods, McCollum is enthusiastic about evidence-based scholarly teaching across the college.