Stephen D. Alkins, Jr.

Stephen D. Alkins, Jr., Ph.D. is the Director of Partnerships and Community Engagement. With his leadership, Stephen helps establish, maintain, and assess the strength of partnerships with STEM research and learner communities. Through collaboration on STEM education grant development in multiple learning environments (informal, K-12 spaces, higher ed., etc.), he supports broadening participation of all STEM learners, STEM identity development, and program evaluation to strengthen the nation’s STEM workforce and innovation. Further, he employs community-centered participatory action frameworks to ensure authentic engagement built on trust. Internally, Stephen’s role and responsibilities include recruitment and retention of research and infrastructure staff, internal policy review to promote fairness and alignment to TERC values, and development and analysis of educational opportunities, and social programming.

In his research, Stephen serves as Principal Investigator for the NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) Resource Center (REVISE Center) and has served as the director of the TERC Scholars Program, an undergraduate research experience (NSF REU) to mentor the next generation of STEM education researchers, increase representation in STEM fields, and advance innovative STEM education research and practice.

Beyond TERC Stephen is a trained cellular neuroscientist and education advocate. He received his B.S. in Biology from Morehouse College and his Master’s and Ph.D. in Cellular Neuroscience from Brandeis University, where he focused on neurodevelopmental mechanisms. He is an alumnus of both the Neuroscience Scholars Program through the National Science Foundation and the MIT Impact Program, and was, featured by Cell Press and Cell Mentor on its “1000 Inspiring Black Scientists in America” list in 2020. In addition to his mentoring experiences at TERC, he has served as a POSSE Science Mentor and been a mentor to graduate students in his thesis laboratory.

Stephen was appointed to the Boston School Committee by Mayor Michelle Wu in 2019 and reappointed in 2025. Here he helps enact the vision for the Boston Public Schools district and co-chairs the Opportunity and Achievement Gaps Task Force. He also completed the Massachusetts Education Policy Fellowship through the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy (2021) and serves on the boards of multiple STEM career development nonprofit organizations. Finally, he is an accomplished, national-performing Spoken Word/SLAM poet who leverages the intersection of art and STEM to teach and encourage participation and appreciation of STEM topics.