Dr. Mary Alice Hamilton first came to Colorado Springs in 1947 with her sister, Sally, and brother-in-law, Robert M. Stabler, as he joined the Colorado College faculty as a zoologist. A 1933 graduate of Elmira College, New York, Hamilton received her Ph.D. in physiology from Columbia University and from 1939 to 1941 did research at the University of Michigan Medical School. Hamilton became the associate lab director for the Colorado Foundation for Research in Tuberculosis from 1947 to 1952. She began to lecture in zoology at Colorado College in 1950, becoming assistant professor in 1958, associate professor in 1963, professor of biology in 1972, and retiring as professor emerita in 1977. She also assisted her brother-in-law, Robert Stabler, with research projects related to trichomoniasis in pigeons and falcons.