Museums, clinics and engagement

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State supports a host of museums, exhibits and community engagement programs that make an indelible impact in the community of Detroit and around the globe.

Museums and culture

David J. Lowrie Geology Mineral Museum 🪨

Detroit's first geology mineral museum is home to over 350 artifacts on display spanning a collection of nearly 50 agates from across the globe. The museum also features a private collection once owned by Thomas Edison and a display of antique miners' lamps dating as far back as the 1800s.

Gordon L. Grosscup Museum of Anthropology ⛏️

As an educational and research component of the Department of Anthropology, the central mission of the Grosscup Museum of Anthropology is to train and actively involve WSU students in the activities of preservation, research, interpretation and exhibition of material culture for the benefit and enrichment of the local community.

Ethnic Heritage Rooms in Manoogian Hall 🗺️

Each space showcases the culture, art and historical artifacts of the diverse nations represented at WSU and beyond in rooms where our students learn about global cultures, classics and languages. Located in Manoogian Hall, our Ethnic Heritage Rooms include African American, Arabic, Armenian, Chicano-Boricua, Chinese, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian and Ukrainian.

Natural History Museum 🐅

Wayne State's museum of natural history houses the largest collection of vertebrate specimens on campus featuring exotic species on display from all over the world. The museum offers self-guided tours for classes and families interested in learning about natural history and other topics such as diversity in nature adaptation, Michigan plants and animals, evolution and extinction, animal classification and taxidermy.

Planetarium 🪐

The WSU Planetarium is an astronomical education resource for Wayne State students and the larger Detroit community. The planetarium features weekly fulldome screenings open to the public, K-12 school groups and special interest groups to learn about the planets, our solar system, stars, galaxies and other wonders of the universe.

WSU Falcons 𓅃

Wayne State's Old Main building has been home to a bonded pair of peregrine falcons since 2016. The initial pair produced at least 11 chicks (officially called eyases) to date. Along with the Department of Natural Resources, researchers in WSU's Department of Biological Sciences have been keeping tabs on the pair and their chicks.

Art galleries and collections 🎭

The Department of Art and Art History programs two galleries on campus serving the university and surrounding communities. Each gallery has its own distinct mission and purpose. The department also manages a Gallery Learning Community to expose students to careers in gallery and arts management.

Clinics

Audiology Clinic

The Wayne State Audiology Clinic is equipped to provide complete audiologic evaluations to both adults and children at no cost. The clinic is a registered diagnostic follow-up center for the Michigan Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program, providing infant hearing screenings and follow-up hearing screenings for all infants and children at no charge. The audiology clinic provides valuable learning opportunities for Wayne State University students enrolled in the audiology doctorate (Au.D.) program.

Psychology Clinic

The Wayne State Psychological Clinic offers Detroiters and WSU students assessment and treatment on a sliding-scale fee basis. The clinic is a training facility for the Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology program in therapy, DBT and assessment. The Psychology Clinic provides first-rate and affordable psychological services, especially psychological assessment and psychotherapy. Students and faculty at the clinic conduct research on the origins, assessment and treatment of psychological problems.

Speech and Language Clinics

The Wayne State University Speech and Language Clinics provide community speech and language evaluation and treatment for individuals of all ages without insurance coverage. The clinics serve both as a community service agency and as an educational/clinical training laboratory.

Research and engagement

Campus greenhouses

The Science Hall greenhouse has been the focus of a flurry of activity. Initially filled with vegetables and flowers destined for the Warrior Gardens, it has since morphed into a nursery for native Michigan plants that have been finding their homes in campus and community projects.

The Detroit Biodiversity Network, a student organization focused on introducing more sustainable practices to campus and reaching out to like-minded organizations and community members, has been overseeing greenhouse operations regular plant care and greenhouse maintenance, project planning and installation and volunteer coordination and networking with the community through a variety of channels and venues.

Ethnic Layers of Detroit (ELD)

ELD is an interdisciplinary urban-focused digital humanities project engaging faculty and student researchers in creating, documenting and sharing multilayered multimedia narratives of Detroit's ethnic histories.

Dan Zowada Memorial Observatory

The Zowada observatory is a state-of-the-art 20-inch robotically-controlled observatory located on Palomar Mountain in California at an altitude of 5,000 feet. This location has some of the darkest skies in the nation. The Department of Physics and Astronomy acquired the observatory in 2017 when Russ and Stephanie Carroll chose Wayne State as the recipient of this unique gift. The observatory is named in honor and memory of their friend, amateur astronomer Dan Zowada.

Materials Cultures Lab

Wayne State's anthropology department's material culture lab contains various secular and religious objects and artworks gathered during ethnographic fieldwork by Dr. Guérin C. Montilus from Benin, Nigeria, Haiti, Cuba and Brazil, among others. The lab is dedicated to illustrating concepts, theories and studies of cultural anthropology (as well as archaeology and linguistics) in the arts and social life including symbolism, myths, rituals, spirituality, magic, witchcraft, sorcery, syncretism, healing and shamanism.

Math Corps

Math Corps is a combined academic and mentoring program for Detroit public school students in grades six through 12. It features a summer camp, year-round Saturday programs and enrichment courses for elementary school children.

The Woodward Review: A Creative & Critical Journal

This journal aims to highlight the collision between creative work and critical engagement as two codependent modes of responding to and moving through the world. Conceived as a magazine of arts and letters to and through Detroit, we seek to publish poetry, prose, art and criticism that reflect the evolving calls and responses we believe define the artistic histories and sensibilities of the city.

Special events

Wayne State Across the Globe

From conducting archaeological excavations in Ecuador to geology field camps in France, learn how faculty and students from Wayne State's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences spend their summers traveling across the globe in search of knowledge!

J Dilla Music Tech Teaching Workshop

This collaborative project between Wayne State and Save The Music Foundation shares the goal of supporting public school teachers in new and innovative ways of teaching music in the classroom, inspired by the late musician, songwriter and influential producer J Dilla.

George Floyd in America Series

Amid racial unrest in the summer of 2020, Wayne State University and community leaders united for a four-part series of candid conversations on race in America.