Michele L. Mekel is the interim director of the intercollege Bioethics Program at Penn State University. She is also a teaching professor of bioethics and an affiliate faculty member of Penn State Law and the Rock Ethics Institute, as well as a jointly appointed to the Humanities Department of the Penn State College of Medicine.

Working at the nexus of health care, law, policy, ethics, 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 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.

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).