Michele L. Mekel is the associate director of the Bioethics Program at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). She is also an associate teaching professor of bioethics and humanities, an affiliate faculty member of Penn State Law and the Rock Ethics Institute, as well as jointly appointed to the Humanities Department of the Penn State College of Medicine.
Working at the nexus of health care, law, policy, ethics, arts, humanities, and education, 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.
Mekel has written an array of academic journal articles and book chapters, and has presented at numerous conferences, symposia, and trainings. She also served as the co-principal investigator of the Penn State Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 project. Her creative writing has: appeared in numerous publications, including Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac; been nominated for Best of the Net; and translated into Cherokee. In 2023, her first poetry chapbook, entitled Under a Quiet Moon, was released.
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)