Alma Stokey began teaching at Mount Holyoke in 1908 and later became the chair of the botany department before her retirement in 1942. Stokey was adamant about hands-on learning, taking her students on weekly field trips to collect specimens. Her research specialty was ferns, and when she took a brief teaching job at the Women’s Christian College in Madras, a sister college of Mount Holyoke, her research expanded to tropical ferns.