College of Arts and Sciences

Following graduation from Winthrop, with a B.A. degree in chemistry and biology and minor in secondary education, Dr. Boland taught ninth-grade physical science for several years at Sullivan Junior High School in Rock Hill. She then earned an M.A.T. in chemistry and taught first year chemistry, chemistry lab, and physical science at Winthrop University on a two-year, full-time appointment as instructor of chemistry. Having fulfilled that contract, she completed a year's American Society of Clinical Pathologists hospital laboratory training as a certified medical technologist at Charlotte Memorial (now Carolinas Medical Center) in Charlotte, N.C. Later, Boland worked as a technologist and taught medical technology students for a number of years, first in the special chemistry laboratory at Charlotte Memorial and then as supervisor of special chemistry at Mercy Hospital in Charlotte. Following that rewarding adventure, she returned to her alma mater, where she taught organic chemistry lab and first-year chemistry lecture and lab for a number of years as a part-time instructor of chemistry. She discovered geology, her passion, during that tenure and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in geology at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C. Boland then returned to Winthrop, where she is now a full-time professor of geology.