Dr. Karen Collins is professor emerita of accounting at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She has a Ph.D. in accounting from Virginia Tech. Dr. Collins coordinated the university's Introduction to Business course taken by all first-year business students. Exploring Business has evolved based on Dr. Collins’ innovative and successful approach to Lehigh’s Introduction to Business course. She was honored with an Innovation in Teaching Award for the course from the Middle Atlantic Association of Colleges of Business Administration.
Dr. Collins has won numerous teaching awards, including the Deming Lewis Faculty Award (for the faculty member who had the strongest influence on the ten-year graduating class); Stabler Award for Excellence in Teaching (for the faculty member who best demonstrates a mastery of his or her field and superior ability in communicating it to others), Coopers and Lybrand’s Excellence in Teaching and Learning Award (given to ten faculty members nationally in recognition of excellence in teaching), Coopers and Lybrand Faculty Internship (given to one faculty member nationally based on his or her positive influence on students), and the Andersen Consulting Faculty Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching (a two-year fellowship given to a faculty member who demonstrates excellence in course development). This fellowship allowed Dr. Collins to work with course designers at the firm’s national offices in Chicago in the development of the Introduction to Business course.
Dr. Collins’ research interests include upward mobility of women in accounting, quality of life issues, stress, and ethnic diversity in the accounting profession.