in biology from Wellesley College (1993) where she did an honors thesis on SCPb, a neurotransmitter in the American lobster.
[1] She earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco where she worked on developmental plasticity in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
[2] In 2010 Dolan was named Editor-in-chief of the journal CBE: Life Sciences Education.
[3] As a neuroscientist, Dolan worked on sensory signalling,[4] gene expression,[5] and nerve development[6] in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
Following her graduate work, Dolan started researching science education where she focuses on the development of programs to increase retention of students in science disciplines[7] and how social and cultural phenomena impact student learning and development, particularly in course-based undergraduate research experiences called CUREs.