Dr. Noland attended the University of Illinois at Springfield for her undergraduate degree before becoming a Laboratory Coordinator for general chemistry at Saint Louis University. There, she developed curriculum for general chemistry labs while working on her Masters degree. This sparked her interest in teaching and research, so she decided to continue her studies at the University of Missouri St. Louis where she completed her Ph.D. Her interdisciplinary research focused on the synthesis and characterization of silicon and germanium-based dyes and their applications as a new class of biologically relevant fluorescent dyes.