She is Director of the WCU Herbarium and is a member of the Society of Herbarium Curators, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, and Southern Appalachian Botanical Society. She received her Ph.D. in Botany at UT-Austin in 1997, and has since worked at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, and now in western North Carolina at WCU. She has undertaken research with graduate and undergraduate students on Southern Appalachian plant groups, including rivercane, saxifrages, sand myrtle and trilliums. Her current research focuses on the biogeography of high-elevation rock outcrop plants. She regularly teaches Flora of the Southern Appalachians, Vascular Plants, Systematics, and Plants and Society.