Please join us in welcoming Kristianna Sarkan (she/her) to Schmid College of Science and Technology. Sarkan will serve as a Instructor of Biological Sciences​.

Kristianna Sarkan is an Instructional Assistant Professor of Biology. She received her BS in Biology from UC Irvine in 2015 and her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from UC Irvine in 2022.  After receiving her Ph.D., she worked at several local colleges including Chapman University before becoming a full-time faculty member in 2024.  Kristianna will teach introductory biology classes at Chapman.

Q&A with Kristianna Sarkan, Instructor of Biological Sciences​

Q: What role were you in before this one? 

A: From 2016-2022 I attended UC Irvine as a Ph.D. student studying post transcriptional processing of mRNA. Since graduating, I have been teaching biology at several colleges in Orange County, including Chapman! Some of you may know me already because I’ve been teaching lab classes at Chapman for a few semesters now. Previously I taught Microbiology 317 Lab, Biology 204 Lab, and Molecular Genetics 208 Lab. In addition to working at Chapman, I also worked at Concordia University Irvine and Cypress College.

Q: What’s the best advice you’ve received in your science career?

A: The best advice I’ve received in my science career is to remember why I pursued science in the first place: it’s exciting and there’s always something new to learn. It can be easy to get bogged down in the details because the courses that we take, whether undergraduate or graduate, are intense and at times overwhelming. For me, I constantly remind myself to see science as a challenge but not a burden. Everything that we read in a textbook was discovered by someone in the laboratory. If I learn something new that I find interesting, I allow myself to go on a tangent and read more about it because it keeps me engaged.

Q: What are you most looking forward to this semester?

A: This semester, I am most looking forward to meeting a whole new group of students. I am teaching Biology 204 lab and lecture which is fun for me because I love introductory biology classes. Students tend to be very enthusiastic and ready to learn and participate, which makes my job as a professor both easier and entertaining. I tend to be very animated when I teach and I love when students match my own enthusiasm for biology. I also enjoy that I can be a mentor to students who are often in their first semester at college, which can be a huge transition from high school.

Q: Got any fun facts to share?

A: I’m a cat lover and currently have two cats in my life: my cat Maggie and my brother’s cat Lia. But growing up we had a cat named LiBe BCNOFNe. If you were wondering where she got her name, it’s the first full line of the periodic table.  And no, I didn’t name her (my brother did).