Margaret Mears earned her M.A. in Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she studied ecology and evolution and did original research on the reproductive strategies of marine invertebrates. She also studied subtidal ecology and marine invertebrate zoology at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California. After graduate school, she taught introductory biology on board a Navy ship at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California, in the Program for Afloat College Education. Later she earned her California Single Subject Teaching Credential and taught integrated science and biology at a San Jose, California, high school and served as a mentor teacher.