Michele L. Mekel

Michele L. Mekel

Interim Director, Penn State Bioethics Program
Affiliate Faculty, Penn State Law and Rock Ethics Institute

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).

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