Maria Miriti Appointed Interim Associate Dean of the Graduate School

As the Interim Associate Dean of the Graduate School, Dr. Miriti will assume the Associate Dean responsibilities related to curriculum and assessment. She will be a member of the Dean & Directors leadership team, Graduate Council, will chair the Graduate School-CAA committee (GSCAA), and will represent the Graduate School on CAA and the Chancellor’s Council on Graduate Studies.

Prior to this appointment Maria has served as the Chair of the Council on Academic Affairs, served on and chaired the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee, served as Associate Director for Curriculum in the Center for Life Sciences Education and created the Miriti Lab focusing on plant population and community ecology; diversity, equity, inclusion and justice in ecology. As an esteemed faculty member with the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology. Dr. Miriti’s research incorporates experimental and demographic methods to address factors that regulate plant populations and communities. Current research in her lab addresses responses of native and exotic herbaceous plants to variation in nutrient levels and the population and community dynamics of desert perennials of the Colorado Desert in California. She also researches and contributes scholarship to issues of inclusion and equity in ecology, environmental sciences and STEM. 

Before coming to Ohio State, Maria earned a BA in Ecology and Evolution from Northwestern University and a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago.