She has received several awards for her teaching, including an Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship in 2001. For the last several years, Olsen has taught Writing in Biology, an Upper-Level Writing Requirement course she has developed that gives students the opportunity to analyze and produce a range of written scientific genres, both academic and professional. In Olsen’s words, students leave the course “maybe looking at things in a different way, maybe being more aware that science is a three dimensional field, rather than just the science they see in a lab.”