After teaching at the secondary level in Colorado and on the Hopi Reservation, she returned to graduate school in 1989 to study History of Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Her research was motivated by an interest in exploring ways of thinking about complex systems that might support more participatory and inclusive forms of social organization.
[4] Beginning in 1996, while completing her dissertation, she taught part-time in the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at the Sonoma State University, where she was hired full-time in 1997.
In addition to teaching courses in the lower division integrated general education sequence, she has taught upper division seminars on such topics as The Global Food Web; Oikos: Ecology and Economics; Water Matters; Health and Healing; The Dharma of Complex Systems; Technology, Ecology, and Society; and the Systems View of the World.
[4] This is reflected in her work from 2005 to 2007 as coordinator of the Northern California Earth Institute, which nurtures community dialogue on themes relating to the environment and sustainable living.