Dr. Ahmad is a Curators' Distinguished Teaching Professor, specializing in the history of the American West.  Her first book, The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws during the Nineteenth Century American West, discussed the impact of opium-smoking on the exclusion of Chinese in the 1880s.  She has recently published Success Depends on the Animals: Emigrants, Livestock, and Wild Animals on the Overland Trails, 1840-1869, a study of the relationship between animals, wild and domestic, and their human companions on the overland trails to the Pacific.  Dr. Ahmad also finds time to research the role of the United States Navy in the Pacific at the turn of the twentieth century.

Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Dr. Ahmad went to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (BA, 1974, and MA, 1979) where she studied with Dr. Reginald Horsman.  Her Ph.D. (1997) is from the University of Missouri-Columbia where she studied with Dr. Susan Flader.  In addition to teaching in Rolla since 2000, she had taught in New York, Texas, Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Guam.

Some of the classes that she teaches are:  History of the American West, History of the American Pacific, American Environmental History, Modern Japan, and Modern East Asia.  In addition to teaching, Dr. Ahmad also serves as the University Archivist.