August 11, 2008

Michele Mekel joins law school faculty

by Pete Rosenbery

CARBONDALE, Ill. – A new faculty member joins the SIU School of Law this fall.

Michele L. Mekel, a visiting associate professor of law, will teach two first-year courses, torts in the fall semester, and legislative and administrative process in the spring. In addition, Mekel, whose scholarship focuses on health law and policy, will teach bioethics and the law, an upper-division course in the fall semester and another health-related course in the spring, said professor Frank G. Houdek, the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs.

Mekel comes to SIUC from Drake University Law School, where she was a visiting associate professor of law. Previously, she served as executive director of Institute of Biotechnology and the Human Future, and as associate director of the Center on Nanotechnology and Society, both at Chicago-Kent College of Law/Illinois Institute of Technology. She was a visiting Fulbright Scholar as a Fulbright U.S. Student Fellow in 2004-2005 at Queen’s University Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, where she conducted a comparative student of Canadian and U.S. academic-affiliated health policy centers.

Mekel earned her law degree at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law in May 2002. She earned a master’s of health administration from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine, Department of Health Management & Informatics, and a master of business administration from the University of Missouri-Columbia College of Business, both in May 2003. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism.

“Given the law school’s Center for Health Law and Policy, its annual Health Policy Institute, and the National Health Law Moot Court Competition which it hosts each year, we are very happy to have Professor Mekel, with her experience and expertise in the health law field, as a member of the faculty for 2008-09,” Houdek said.