Michelle Smith enjoys working with and teaching undergraduate students so much that it inspired her to switch fields.  Michelle’s Ph.D. is in biology, with an emphasis in genetics.  While she liked working in the lab, she LOVED being a TA and often found herself day-dreaming about ways to teach biology. When it came time for her postdoc, Michelle heard about a program that was looking for people to help transform undergraduate teaching and do work in a field known as Discipline-Based Education Research.  This field combines teaching and learning with disciplinary content knowledge.  She was thrilled to explore how undergraduates learn biology and help faculty try new teaching methods in their classrooms.  At Cornell, Michelle runs a biology education research lab, and enjoys collaborating with instructors to help students learn and make undergraduate STEM courses more inclusive.

Michelle is married to Jeremy Smith who is a software engineer at the Lab of Ornithology.  They have a son named Alasdair who loves to ski, run, be in the woods, and read. It is hard to know which member of the Smith household is most excited about being a part of Bethe House. They love hearing about the neat things the students are thinking about and doing.  And one of them still cannot get over the fact that there is a place that serves ice cream with dinner every night!