Kumkum Prabhakar has her Ph.D. from the Department of Botany, University of Delhi, India. While working as Research Associate, she published her thesis in many international journals. She co-authored an extensively-quoted paper in the Embryology of Angiosperms, published by Springer-Verlag. Presently, Dr. Prabhakar is an Associate Professor of Biology at Nassau Community College. In 1999, she developed and now continues to teach an inquiry-based curriculum in the Bio 124 Plants & Society course.

Dr. Prabhakar is a recipient of State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and has been included in “Who’s Who in America 2007.” She has served on executive positions of many departmental and College-Wide Committees. Her main contributions are in the area of academic assessment of student learning. She serves as Chair of the SUNY General Education Natural Science subcommittee. Dr. Prabhakar has conducted many workshops pertinent to teaching botany in the liberal arts curriculum, outcomes assessment, active learning, and modifying curriculum with technology. She modified the Plants and Society course to be offered as WebCT-enhanced course, Honors seminar, international study course, continuing education course, and as learning community with the Reading Department.

Presently, she is participating in a National Science Foundation grant project with New York University and seven other institutions to implement the interdisciplinary “Molecules of Life” concept in the non-science majors’ curriculum. As a result of participation in this NSF grant, she initiated the development of a new course, “Molecules and Medicines,” to compare modern medicines with the ethnobotanical use of plants as medicines. Her community service includes presentations at Nassau County senior citizen centers, where she discusses the botany of chocolate, herbs, and spices. She serves on the executive board of Phytomorphology (an international journal of plant morphology), The Botanica (publication from Delhi University Botanical Society), the Metropolitan Association of College and University Biologists, and the Women’s Faculty Association at Nassau Community College.