Paige Kouba, PhD

 STEM Educator          |         Climate Change Ecologist          |          Science Communicator

A professional headshot of Paige, a white woman with blonde hair. She is smiling, wearing a collared shirt and an orange sweater, standing in front of an orange tree

Paige Kouba (she/her)

About Me

I completed my PhD at UC Davis, studying how climate and fire shape California forests from leaves to landscapes. While teaching undergraduate ecology courses and leading grad student orientation trips, I developed a lot of questions about building transformative learning communities. Now, as an NSF FUTURE in Biology postdoc with Drs. Erika Zavaleta, Roxanne Beltran, and Robin Dunkin at UCSC, I'm researching how peer and mentorship networks form in field-based educational settings, and how positive community-building experiences can support marginalized students in STEM.

How to pronounce my name: page (like in a book); koba (rhymes w/ boba)

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A stretch of coastal Highway 1, taken from the vantage of the bike lane, as the sun comes up on a foggy morning


My journey has taken me from Eugene, OR; to Cambridge, MA; to Davis, CA; and now to Santa Cruz! Click here to view a copy of my CV.

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UC Davis Grad Slam Finalist 2022 — Climate Change Time Machine: Sending Trees 50 Years into the Future
Kouba Exit Seminar_5.29.24
Exit Seminar Presentation — Once and Future Forests: Historical reconstructions & climate change experiments for California trees