Professor Gina Maranto co-teaches in the Ecosystem Science and Policy program and is a Senior Lecturer and Director of English Composition in the Department of English. She received her M.A. in fiction from The Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University in 1980, and her B.A. in English Literature from Pomona College in 1977. She is a prize-winning science writer who has covered the environment, Earth sciences, and biomedicine at the national level since 1982. Her articles, opinion pieces, and reviews have appeared in Discover, The Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American, The New York Times, and other publications. Her cover piece for Discover on climate change won the National Association of Science Writers Award for best magazine piece of 1986 and limned the major issues that remain of interest today with regard to that subject. She is author of Quest for Perfection (1996), a history of attempts to alter birth outcomes and a critique of assisted reproductive technologies.

Since 1998, she has taught writing at the University of Miami, pioneering courses on science and scientific writing for graduates and undergraduates. As co-PI on a NASA grant with Dr. Eugene Rankey, a sedimentologist now at the University of Kansas, she implemented an advanced writing course in Earth systems science and went on to edit a website that crystallized some twenty years of NASA-funded work in Earth systems education. She has served as director of the Composition program at UM since 2005.

In 2006, she received the Dean's Award in Special Recognition for Contributions to Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts & Sciences. She has also received a Vice President's Award for Service (2004), a Provost's Grant for Innovative Teaching (2004), and an Excellence-in-Teaching Award (2003).

Full CV