Vanessa N. Louis
Contact
Location
1360 D
610 E. University Ave.
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1259
Vanessa Louis teaches across both elementary and secondary programs within the Education Preparation Program at the Marsal School of Education. Her course portfolio includes Education in a Multicultural Society, Elementary Science Methods, Secondary Science Methods, and Science in the City. As a field instructor at the School at Marygrove, she supports teaching interns through the Detroit P20 program.
Louis’s research centers on abolitionist teaching, anti-racist pedagogies, culturally and historically relevant science education, research-practice partnerships, community cultural wealth, and teacher residencies and fellowships. Her scholarship is dedicated to dismantling traditional barriers in education and fostering inclusive learning environments that empower all students.
Louis collaborates with the Michigan Science Center in Detroit to support youth programs, including STEMinsta, which empowers Black girls in Detroit to pursue self-directed science projects. Her leadership extends to managing science summer camps serving more than 1,000 youth. She also partners with the Detroit River Story Lab on a Youth Participatory Action Research project that centers youth as co-researchers and change agents in their communities. In all her work, she uses antiracist pedagogies, drawing on Freire’s framework of conscientization, to foster critical consciousness and leadership among Detroit’s youth.
Prior to joining Marsal, Louis taught middle and high school science for six years and served as an administrator and instructional coach for two years. Her previous research, supported by the National Science Foundation’s Developing STEM Professionals as Educators and Teacher Leaders (DSPETL) project, focused on supporting early-career science teachers in developing cultural competence through abolitionist and emancipatory pedagogies. She also worked with the CREATE Teacher Residency Program to examine the experiences of Black teacher fellows within social justice-oriented teacher education.
Louis’s honors include the 2025 Anti-Racism Research and Community Impact Fellowship from the National Center for Institutional Diversity and the 2024–2025 Jhumki Basu Scholar Award from the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. She has been recognized as an Honored Instructor at the University of Michigan, participated in the Clinical Fellows Program of the Association of Teacher Educators, and was a CADRE Fellow with the National Science Foundation.