Dr. Ellen Beaulieu is a Professor of Chemistry at Diablo Valley College. She received her BS in Chemistry in 2004 from the University of Georgia. She was awarded a Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2009 from the University of California, Berkeley, with a focus on organic synthesis.
She began her professional career as a Medicinal Chemist at a nonprofit, SRI International, synthesizing new drugs and diagnostic tools for infectious diseases. She worked on a variety of projects, discovering new treatments for flu and Alzheimer’s, as well as diagnostics for bedbug infestation and parasitic infections like Chagas' disease. She has two issued patents.
In 2013, she left SRI to join the chemistry faculty at DVC and has never looked back. She simply loves teaching and inspiring others to see the power of their love of science to change lives. She likes to think of her role as a chemistry instructor as helping students see their capacity to enter rewarding future careers in medicine, engineering, and fundamental research and giving them the skills and tools to realize their full potential. She loves to help students see the ways that chemistry connects to their career goals and inspires them to dream of impacting local and global change through science.
She has been a leader in improving equitable STEM instruction at DVC, working on a variety of projects. She is a member of DVC’s MESA Steering Committee and an Umoja instructor for Chemistry. She acted as a co-PI for the California Education Learning Lab (CELL) grants to develop curricular tools and professional development trainings that help STEM instructors shift students’ mindset to see themselves as capable thinkers and learners. She currently serves as the PI for an NSF S-STEM grant that created the DVC PUMA STEM Scholars Program. This program awards scholarships to low-income STEM students in our MESA program.
In her spare time, she loves to puzzle, read, camp, hike, do karate, and make delicious ice cream. She believes passionately in minimizing her impact on the environment while maximizing her impact in promoting social change. She hopes to help her students learn how to use their love of science to do the same.