Dr. Stephanie Luster-Teasley

Stephanie Luster-Teasley, Ph.D., serves as the interim dean of the College of Engineering at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Before her current role, she served as the vice provost for undergraduate education from 2020 – 2022 and professor and chair of the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering from 2016 – 2020. She graduated from North Carolina A&T in 1996 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and continued her graduate studies at Michigan State University (MSU) where she received her M.S. in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering. She joined the faculty at N.C. A&T in 2004, after working in private industry as an environmental engineer. Her research specializations include environmental remediation, water sustainability and engineering education. Over the last 18 years, she has been driven by a deep commitment and care for her students and lauded for bringing the excitement of real-world, hands-on experience into all her engineering courses and mentoring activities.

Luster-Teasley has demonstrated excellence in teaching, research and service. Her honors include the 2005 National Women of Color in Technology Educational Leadership Award, the 2006 N.C. A&T State University Rookie Researcher of the Year Award and the 2008 N.C. A&T State University Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. In May 2013, her teaching and engineering education work resulted in her receiving the 2013 UNC Board of Governors Teaching Excellence Award. This honor is one of the highest awards conferred for teaching in the UNC System. In 2014, she received the Dupont Minorities in Engineering Award at the National American Society for Engineering Education National Conference. In 2018, she was recognized as a recipient of the Black Engineer of the Year Innovation Award. In 2020, she received the Michigan State University Civil and Environmental Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award in recognition of her professional accomplishments and was recently invited to serve on the MSU College of Engineering Alumni Advisory Board.

Luster-Teasley’s research accomplishments include receiving patents from the United States, Great Britain and Canada for her development of a controlled release chemical oxidation polymer system for the remediation of water and wastewater. This recognition designates her as the first African American woman and the first faculty member at N.C. A&T to receive international patents. Her technology was licensed in 2017 by a company to market nationally as an emerging remediation method for groundwater and soil contamination.

For service to the community, Luster-Teasley has led several major initiatives. In 2010, she led the A&T team that developed the winning National 4-H Science Youth Day experiment used by millions of K-8 students worldwide. This outreach activity taught students about global warming and energy use.

During her career, Luster-Teasley has received funding from the Department of Education for developing a mentoring program for students in STEM disciplines, the National Science Foundation for developing and implementing case studies modules in science labs, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to implement science programs for middle school girls. She serves as a co-PI of the N.C. A&T ADVANCE-IT grant, which seeks to increase equity and help implement programs for female faculty to successfully progress through academia from assistant to full professorship. Overall, her disciplinary, science education research, and professional development grants have yielded over $7.5 million in funding.

She is the mother of two sons who are also both Aggies engineers. Her oldest completed his B.S. in Computer Science and M.S. in Computer Systems Technology. Her youngest son is an Industrial Engineering major.