Lara Kriegel

Director

• lkriegel@indiana.edu
• (812) 855-6290

Director Lara Kriegel oversees the LLC, including academics, programming, and budgets. She works with various student groups and officers, helping to coordinate visiting alumni, scholars, and artists. She works closely with the Board of Educational Programming (BOEP) to choose Collins seminars every semester as well as to arrange fireside chats, professor dinners, and similar events.

Professor Kriegel is an interdisciplinary scholar with a joint appointment in the History and English Departments.  She specializes in Victorian Studies, and has published widely on museums and exhibitions, and on warfare and empire. She teaches classes on these themes, and on such subjects as diaries, food, and entrepreneurship. Professor Kriegel is currently finishing a book on the Crimean War and its aftermath, which traces the lives and legacies of Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole, and the Light Brigade, among others.  At the LLC, Professor Kriegel brings together her own academic interests with a broader concern for the value of learning communities.  This conviction, like her intellectual expertise, is the fruit of her own higher education.  As an undergraduate at Emory University, a master's student at the University of York (UK), and a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University, residence life, student leadership, and volunteerism were all mainstays of her experiences, inside and beyond the classroom.

Yara Clüver

Associate Director

• ycluver@indiana.edu
• (812) 855-7354

Associate Director Yara Clüver has a background in the arts (MFA in photography) and years of experience in student affairs, having been at Collins for over 20 years. She enjoys interacting with our residents and helping them integrate their living experience to their curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular plans and career paths. She oversees the day-to-day operations at Collins, mentors our Arts Council student group, and prepares the Collins Q instructors to teach Q199 to our incoming students (our gateway to Collins course).

Together with the Collins Director, Yara coordinates the Collins International Diversity and Inclusion Scholar (CIDIS) program, which brings emerging and established artists as well as scholars from across continents to live and teach at Collins. She can help with questions about academics at Collins, student programming, and is a good source of information about the campus and local arts community.

She teaches a variety of courses at Collins, including “Discovering the Artist's Book” (a hands-on studio course), a service-learning course called “Art and Community” (where IU students engage with children in public schools in self-directed art projects), and most recently “Food Photography” (which combines practice with history and theory on the topic).

Clüver exhibits her work and gives talks on art nationally and internationally. She grew up in three continents in a multicultural home and in addition to English, speaks German and Portuguese fluently.

Lindsay Brown

Assistant Director

• lbugher@indiana.edu
• (812) 856-3025

Assistant Director Lindsay Brown oversees Collins budgets, handles admissions, and manages the on-line alumni newsletter, as well as all other alumni communications. She works with multiple student groups, including the Board of Programmers, the Cheshire Café, E-Force, and Philanthropy.

As a Collins alumna, she is dedicated to keeping Collins alumni engaged and connected to the community. Lindsay completed her B.A. in East Asian Languages and Cultures at IU in 2005, and her M.S. in Higher Education and Student Affairs in 2010. Her office is at the end of the Duty Office suite.

Leigh Davis

Student Services Assistant

• cllc@indiana.edu
• (812) 855-9815

Student Services Assistant (SSA) Leigh Davis staffs the public office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. In addition to giving tours and assisting seminar instructors, she can answer questions about the LLC, get your free Ryder Film Series tickets (two per week per resident), help you sign up for field trips and ticket subsidy programs (Collins often subsidizes tickets to campus and community events for residents), and check out equipment to you (such as still and video cameras). She also helps manage the official Collins Facebook Page and Twitter and can help you plan and implement programming within Collins.

Leigh graduated from IU with a B.A. in History in 2008 (after living in Collins for four years) and a Master’s degree in Information and Library Science in 2015. In her free time, she plays board games and rpgs, salsa dances, and dips her toes into various craft projects.

Tanjimul Alam

Co-Director of Sustain Collins and Sustainability Program Assistant at the Office of Sustainability

• alamt@iu.edu
• (812) 855-3749

Tanjimul works as both a part of Sustain IU and the LLC / SustainCollins leadership team at Indiana University. Co-directing SustainCollins alongside his counterpart Teresa and wonderful student leaders, Tanjimul helps connect students to campus sustainability efforts and programming open to floor members and Collins residents alike.

As IU Office of Sustainability staff, his team’s role is to evaluate, report, and collaboratively improve the university’s sustainability performance. This includes looking at the efficiency / longevity of our resource use and determining IU’s operational environmental and human health impacts – both entail the goal to improve and prepare for the future. As the Sustainability Programs Assistant, Tanjimul takes on a jack-of-all trades role as the seasonal projects and administrative arm of the staff. You can find him at his office at the E-House between the main quad and Hillcrest most days. Tanjimul received an O’Neill BSPA in Sustainability in 2018 and he loves watching the skies (clouds, stars, aviation, and more!), learning about the world, and trying new makerspace/design skills in his free time. 

Lizzie Grennan Browning

Co-Director of Sustain Collins and Associate Director, Integrated Program in the Environment

• eabrowni@indiana.edu
• 812-855-8742