• B.S., U.C. Davis
• M.S., University of Washington
• LL.M., Northwestern School of Law
• J.D., U.C. Hastings
  

Barbara recently joined the law faculty at the University of Idaho as an Associate Professor. She will be teaching Water, Environmental and Property Law. She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at San Francisco State University. She is also currently mediating efforts to settle water distribution disputes on the Walker River in California and Nevada. Barbara is a member of the Montana, Colorado and California bars. She received her LL.M. from Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College in 2003, and her J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1990, where she graduated Magna cum laude.

As a law student, Barbara worked for the California Attorney General's Office in Environmental Law. She also worked for the Natural Heritage Institute researching the legal/policy aspects of proposed technical solutions to the agricultural drainage problem in the San Joaquin Valley, as part of the San Joaquin Valley Drainage Project. Her research focused on solutions requiring integrated management of surface and groundwater. Following law school she clerked for Justice Lohr of the Colorado Supreme Court Barbara joined the staff of the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission in 1991. She served as chief legal counsel for water right negotiations between the Commission and the National Park Service, which resulted in protection of the hydrothermal system within Yellowstone National Park. She also served as chief legal counsel to Montana on negotiations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Chippewa Cree Tribe of the Rocky Boy's Reservation, the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Tribes of the Fort Belknap Reservation and the Blackfeet Tribe. Law is her second career.

Barbara received her M.S. in Geology from the University of Washington in 1982, and her B.S. in Geology from the University of California at Davis in 1977. As a geologist, she did applied research in the exploration and development of geothermal energy in California, Japan and the Philippines, focusing in particular on the effect of geothermal development on surface hydrothermal systems.