As one of the first adjunct faculty members in the School of Undergraduate Studies at the NUNM, Dana is deeply passionate about cultivating as engaging of a learning environment for her students as possible. “If my students do not leave my class each day with an idea how to apply the lesson or activity to their lives or the world around them, then I have not done my job. Teaching is a component of learning. The point is that my students are learning.”

Prior to coming to NUNM Dana worked locally and internationally as an educator, midwifery assistant, and birth and postpartum doula. Most of Dana’s classes, such as Introduction to Medical Anthropology; Nutritional Anthropology; Human Sexuality; and Self-care and Self-Management (that she co-teaches with Dr. Megan Golani) are centered around the complexities of health and well-being. “Health matters enormously. It matters for my students to practice it in their lives and to understand what it means for everyone else.” She also teaches the Capstone courses and Scientific and Professional Communication.

During her undergraduate studies at Oregon State University, Dana and her colleague developed the nation’s first on-campus emergency food pantry. Dana went on to earn her Master of Science in Medical Anthropology from Durham, England in 2010. Her thesis focused on developing a socio-political theoretical framework to introduce and contextualize college students as a food insecure population. In pursuit of increasing her effectiveness as a teacher, Dana completed a Master of Arts in Teaching from Concordia University in 2018.