Dr. Lisa D. Brown has been a faculty member in the Department of Biology at Morgan State University (MSU) since 2001. Her early research centered on how neural activity affects muscle plasticity, with her studies revealing both morphological changes (such as T-tubule reorganization and myotube formation) and physiological changes (including altered calcium transients and spark production) that indicate a process of dedifferentiation back to an embryonic state. Dr. Brown has since shifted her focus from bench research to strategies aimed at improving undergraduate STEM education. She has contributed significantly to reforming teaching methods in introductory biology courses, partly through her involvement in the National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in the Life Sciences. In addition to her research and teaching efforts, Dr. Brown serves as the Honors Program Coordinator for the School of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, where she oversees about 100 honors students and has developed interdisciplinary courses to enhance critical thinking among STEM majors. She has also served as the principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on several major grants, including the NIH MARC U*STAR Program (2009-2014), NSF HBCU-UP PERSIST Program (2019-present), and the NIH Bridge to the Baccalaureate Program (2021-present). These programs focus on fostering critical thinking, high-impact teaching practices, and research opportunities that help retain and support the persistence of STEM students beyond their freshman year. She also serves as the co-Pi for the NIH IRADCA Program (2019-present), which provides teaching practicums with MSU faculty for postdoctoral fellows at Johns Hopkins University.