Dr. Jansma comes to the University of Colorado Denver after many years in both academic and administrative positions at several universities. Her background is geosciences with a research focus on using the Global Positioning System to examine deformation of Earth's surface with emphasis on active tectonics of the Caribbean region. She received her BS from Stanford University and MS and PhD from Northwestern University. She was a National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After a brief stint in the energy industry, she moved to the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez where she started as an assistant professor and eventually became the Associate Dean of Research for the College of Arts and Sciences. After ten years, she returned to the US mainland in 2000 to join the faculty at the University of Arkansas where she became Chair of Geosciences in 2004. After eight years in Arkansas, she assumed the position of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at New Mexico State University. She relocated to Texas in 2009 where she served as Dean of the College of Science at the University of Texas at Arlington until joining CU Denver in September 2014. She and her husband, who is also an academic geoscientist, have two adult children.