She joined the faculty at Virginia Tech in 2000, after earning her Ph.D. from Penn State in Forest Resources, her M.S. in Forestry from the University of Maine, and her B.S. in Ecology from Juniata College. Her research focuses on reconstructing environmental history of forested ecosystems from tree-ring records, forest composition and structure, and historical documents. At Virginia Tech she teaches an undergraduate class in Forest Ecology and Silvics and a graduate class in Advanced Forest Ecology.