While working as a youth pastor for a small church in Chandler, Arizona, Vance Collins never imagined how his journey would lead him to shepherd beginning engineering students at Grand Canyon University.
Now, his commitment to help young men and women begin their professional journeys has resulted in him being named GCU's third Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network Engineering Unleashed Fellow.
“I call it the ‘Boxy’ project,” Collins, a full-time instructor in GCU’s College of Engineering and Technology, said of the project he uses to introduce students to engineering – and what helped him land the fellowship. “I’ll be developing a program that any engineering instructor can use to help students understand how materials can affect a project.”
The project looks simple: Two students are teamed. One designs a box, the other an inset lid. The trick, Collins said, is that it’s one thing when drawn and another when materials come into play.
“They have to understand the project in three dimensions, not two,” he said. “These are very smart students, and they need to learn about the reality of design.”
Collins described how the students might agree to make a 2-inch-by-2-inch box without realizing that material thickness affects the space into which the lid is inserted. If the box measures 2 inches by 2 inches on the outside, the lid must be 2 inches by 2 inches minus the width of the box’s walls.
“This helps students to start thinking through problem solving in three dimensions,” he said. “Specifically in the lab, I teach that materials fail. Maybe you have all these ideas, like we're going to neglect friction. We're going to neglect air resistance. We're going to neglect all of these things. It’s not fair to neglect those things because they actually do exist.”
A group of his students in the Engineers Gone Global club learned this firsthand while working on a Costa Rica water tower project this summer.
“I am a first-year education specialist,” Collins said. “I specialize in that most of my students are first-year engineers, with first-year experience. So, that's why I like a lot of these simple, hands-on projects. They're going to do plenty of complicated math in other places, but I want them to see experimental error and how, you know, they might ruin a project and have over 100% error in something that they ran.”
His approach is what garnered the Engineering Unleashed Fellowship, whose awards are funded by the Kern Family Foundation. After attending a workshop about the program in summer 2024, he was encouraged to publish his findings in a format called “KEEN cards.” Other professors from around the nation do the same.
“Of that process, they look at the cards and then make a recommendation,” Collins said. “I think the KEEN Fellowship committee liked the card. They asked me to submit it for the fellowship. Just about a month ago, they let me know that they had awarded me as (an Engineering Unleashed Fellow).”
He was “pretty shocked” when he learned he had been named to the fellowship. Coming into academia later in life, he didn’t expect to be selected among elite engineering instructors from around the nation.
It wasn’t a shock to Paul Lambertson, dean of the College of Engineering and Technology, where Collins teaches.
“Vance is just fantastic,” he said “When you think about somebody who can teach, I mean, actually, teach, it's a pretty amazing grouping of skillsets, and Vance has all of those.”
Lambertson said Collins' achievement is remarkable and a high honor for the college.
“It's sort of fun to be recognized for taking a bit of a different approach to the learning and rollout of engineering curriculum,” Collins said. “It allows me to build something that can be rolled out to other professors to walk (them) through introducing that particular project into their classroom.”
It was his colleague, Dr. Kyle Jones, professor of biomedical engineering, who set the wheels in motion. He and Lambertson sent Collins to the summer workshop.
“Vance had a great project to encourage a creative mindset in young engineers,” Jones said. “Engineers are biased to action, and (the Boxy) project stimulates curiosity and excitement. It’s cheap and scalable.”
Jones and Collins co-taught a class in spring 2025. Jones developed an appreciation for Collins’ teaching techniques and enthusiasm.
“He’s the perfect instructor for teaching our first-year experience,” Jones said.
He and his wife have two young adults in college, and one who graduated this year. They worked together as youth pastors, a role that led to a “side hustle” that has been their business for almost 25 years.
“We were doing a lot of branding,” Collins said. “We made T-shirts, hats, banners and signs.”
Bended Knee Designs evolved into a full-time business with employees and customers nationwide. Collins and his wife make branded products for schools, churches, small businesses and others. The business thrived, but it never deterred him from his mission to minister to young adults.
“God opened the door and then, you know, I fell into teaching a lot of freshmen,” he said. “I’ve just spent a lot of time working with students in that age band of 18 to 25. Now, I'm using a little bit of engineering, but I'm using a lot of soft skills. You know, just teaching important things to them, it's important, now that they've moved out from their parents.”
Collins sees his role beyond teaching engineering. He emphasizes the importance of connecting with students, as it’s also crucial to teach them engineering and practical life skills, such as making their own mac and cheese and doing their laundry.
“It’s also important to solve for X, but it's also important to show up to class at 12:30,” he said.
“I think I've spent a lifetime working with this age band, and so not really realizing it, it seems well-suited for me to work with the first-year students and just talk with them about the transition. They're so excited for the freedom, but then also just as frustrated by the time management.”
Lambertson believes that the Boxy project is a crucial step for students’ first year in the engineering program. It makes them better prepared for the next level in their education.
“His project just seems so simple, but it is thought-provoking,” Lambertson said. “How hard is it to make a box? You've got to design it. You've got to fabricate it. You need to cut it to the appropriate dimensions of your design and ensure everything works. It's a great project. Really ingenious for him to come up with that (as a) way to teach people the engineering design process.”
Collins believes a door was opened for him, and he is where he is supposed to be. He looks at the journey he’s traveled and carries its perspective with him.
“God opened the door, and then I fell into teaching a lot of freshmen,” he said. “It’s sort of like Mordecai said in Esther (4:13-14), ‘could it be for such a time as this that God has brought you to this place?’”
Collins believes if he wanted to be a professor 25 years ago, God would have said, “Not yet.” “I’m a bit of a different professor today than I would have been (back then),” he said. “Because of all of these different life skills, these different experiences that I've had through the years, I think it makes me kind of unique in a way to be able to communicate to those first-year students.”
GCU senior writer Eric Jay Toll can be reached at [email protected].
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