Besides the fulfillment it gives her, teaching enables Rivera Rios to pass on her deep-rooted commitment to improving Earth's environment—the commitment that led her toward a science career in the first place.

Ask Casey Thornbrugh about the fragile state of Navajo grazing lands in Arizona and he'll tell you that "the sustainability of the land is essential to the cultural and economic well-being of those who reside on it." This principle fires his work studying sand dune mobility on the Moenkopi Plateau in Arizona, a semiarid region of rolling sandhills on the southwestern side of the Navajo Nation.