Biography

Michele L. Mekel is the associate director of the intercollege Bioethics Program at Penn State. She is also a teaching professor of bioethics, an affiliate faculty member of Penn State Law and the Rock Ethics Institute, and she has a joint appointment in the Department of Humanities at Penn State College of Medicine.

Working at the nexus of health care, law, policy, ethics, and education, professor Mekel has served as: a law professor, an undergraduate instructor in Southeast Asia, the executive administrator of academic-based bioethics programs, a health law and policy programming organizer, a health plan compliance and planning officer, a hospital association manager, a law clerk to the Missouri Supreme Court, and a Fulbright scholar. In addition, she has experience as a journal editor and as the head of external affairs, communications, alumni relations, and events for a law school.

Professor Mekel has written an array of academic journal articles and book chapters and has presented at numerous conferences, symposia, and trainings. She is also the co-principal investigator of the Penn State Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 project. Her creative writing has been featured in numerous publications, including having her poetry selected and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac.

Professor Mekel attended the University of Missouri-Columbia, where she earned a bachelor of journalism (magna cum laude), masters of business administration and health care administration, and a Juris Doctor (order of the coif and editor-in-chief of the Missouri Law Review).