Mariah A. Knowles is the Curriculum Lead for Tiny Earth at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a self-proclaimed “academic Swiss army knife,” she uses open pedagogy and mixed methods to understand expressivism and human flourishing. Her curiosity extends beyond her degree areas: Computer Science, English Rhetoric, Education Policy Studies, and Information Science. In 2025, she received her Ph.D. from UW-Madison, where she called for a “radical unnarrowing” for belonging and inclusion in the Tech industry in her dissertation “Doing Evil for Money”.

Her teaching is versatile and highly regarded by learners, with a dedication to open, equitable, and human-centered pedagogy. She has presented talks and workshops on evidenced-based teaching practices, interpreting high-dimensional data, defining fairness in AI, and telling transgender stories.

“That’s really all we’re trying to ask our students to do: to put a fine point on what our human endeavors are, and to be okay with messiness and ambiguity and so on. So, we tell stories. That’s just something humans do.”

As the Curriculum Lead for Tiny Earth, Mariah brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the Tiny Earth community, including a decade of experience in teaching, curriculum design, and AJEDI. Mariah’s commitment to AJEDI is embedded throughout her work, tied in part to her own identity as a trans woman and her work with community colleges, collaborators, and sexual assault crisis centers. Mariah leads the development of new, evidence-based AJEDI interventions for Tiny Earth and STEM college instructors to use, which she will incorporate over the coming years into the Tiny Earth student guide, instructor guide, and TEPI Training content.