Dr. Doherty is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the College of Education and Center for Research on College Science Teaching and Learning at the Michigan State University.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi live in a (mostly) mutualistic symbiosis with the roots of most herbaceous plants.  In exchange for carbon from the host plant, they provide the plant with various services such as increased access to nutrients and water and protection from pathogens or heavy metals. The overarching goal of Dr. Doherty's dissertation was to improve understanding of how arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity is maintained within the rooting zone of an individual host plant and the consequences of that diversity on host plant performance. Her thesis work focused on how how abiotic factors (including heavy metals) affected this globally important symbiosis.

Dr. Doherty was an NSF STEM GK-12 Fellow at Penn for four years.  As a fellow she developed and taught a service learning course involving undergraduates in teaching biology to West  Philadelphia high school students. Her GK-12 work allowed her to leverage funding from the local school district to develop low cost inquiry labs and classroom activities that can be done in every classroom and to continue monthly professional development sessions she began as a fellow. 

Working with Philadelphia teachers and students for six years changed her life and now, instead of studying fungi, she is engaged in a Post-Doc studying Environmental Literacy with Andy Anderson at Michigan State University.  At MSU, Dr. Doherty's major research focus is the development of learning progressions leading toward environmental science literacy for students from elementary school through college.  Environmental literacy is the capacity to understand and participate in evidence-based discussions of socio-ecological systems and to make informed decisions about appropriate actions and policies. These learning progressions will include 1) a learning progression framework that defines learning goals and levels of achievement leading to those goals, 2) assessment tools, including tests, clinical interviews, and classroom formative or embedded assessments that give insight into students' knowledge and practice and help evaluate students' progress through the levels of achievement defined by the framework and 3) teaching tools for both professional development and K-16 classrooms that help teachers and students to achieve environmental science literacy. She is also more generally interested in what tools teachers need to teach science for true understanding, what it takes to induce teachers to use these tools once they have them, and how all teachers can acquire these tools?  That is, once learning progressions and teaching tools have been developed, how can pre- and in-service teachers be sustainably trained to change their classroom culture without large, short-term NSF grants?