I am a 5th year PhD student in the Department of Planetary Sciences (Lunar and Planetary Laboratory). My research interests have always revolved around planet formation, both from a scientific and an educational standpoint. Fortunately, the Planetary Sciences department has allowed me to pursue a “hybrid” dissertation project, where I am able to contribute to the field of planet formation by conducting both science and education research. My current research project is a two-phased, mixed-methods study aimed to analyze college students’ preinstructional ideas about planet formation. For the first phase of the study, I used short answer questions covering a variety of topics pertaining to planet formation (planetary composition, gravity, basic definitions, and planetary motion) to investigate the range and prevalence of students’ ideas, prior to instruction, about these topics. Coding these responses for common themes, categories, and misconceptions aided in the development of the first version of the Planet Formation Concept Inventory (PFCI). A concept inventory is a multiple-choice instrument focused on a specific topic and it is based upon known student misconceptions in addition to instructors’ goals for teaching the material. Concept inventories are extremely useful for assessing students’ pre and post-instructional understanding of a certain topic. In this next year, I will continue to develop and validate the PFCI using feedback from upwards of 1,000 ASTRO 101 students, in additional to performing a statistical analysis of the instrument. The final version of this instrument will allow instructors to evaluate students’ understanding of planet formation before and after instruction. More importantly, instructors will be able to evaluate the efficacy of new pedagogy developed on this topic.