Dr. Becky Mercer is the Associate Dean for STEM at Palm Beach State College's Gardens campus. Previously she served for 5 years as the College's STEM Education Director.
A Los Angeles native, Dr. Mercer holds a bachelor's degree in biological sciences (Spanish minor) from the University of Southern California (USC) and a Ph.D. in metabolic biology from Columbia University in New York City. As an undergraduate student she worked in USC’s neuroscience department and later in the USC skeletal biology lab, investigating inhibitors of osteoporotic bone remodeling. Dr. Mercer served as senior research associate at Telios Pharmaceuticals in San Diego and as an editor at the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Her graduate work explored mechanisms of pulmonary emphysema/COPD using animal models, cell-based assays, and human lung biopsies, with a focus on matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). After graduating, Dr. Mercer relocated to Scripps Research Institute (now UF Scripps) for a postdoc in cancer biology and was recruited to Scripps' high throughput screening core as project manager for an $80M grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Mercer holds a certificate in project management from Florida Atlantic University (FAU). She has developed faculty trainings, post-secondary curriculum, and community programs to promote success of underrepresented minorities and women in STEM. Dr. Mercer taught biotechnology and forensic science courses at the Palm Beach Gardens and Lake Worth PBSC campuses. From 2015-18 Dr. Mercer served as PI, with Professors Oleg Andric (EPT/ET), and Ira Rosenthal (Math) on PBSC's $868K National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded InnovATE project that increased enrollment of minorities and women in engineering programs. Currently Dr. Mercer is PI, along with chemistry professors Cynthia Judd and Dr. Marina Rines on a $1.5M STEM Articulation & Transfer project with FAU's College of Science to increase university transfer and graduation by PBSC students, particularly Hispanics. Dr Mercer also served as PI with Professor Marie Grasso, Boca Raton STEM Associate Dean Dana Hamadeh, and Dr. Felicia Survis on an NSF GeoPaths project with FAU to grow participation of women and minorities in the geosciences.
