Trevor Bechtel

Trevor Bechtel is a lecturer at the School of Social Work. He earned his PhD at Loyola University Chicago and has held administrative and faculty appointments at diverse institutions throughout the Great Lakes for the past 30 years. He is committed to fostering learning communities that can engage in difficult conversations. As an associate professor at Bluffton University, he directed the honors program and served as acting director of the MBA program. As dean of Conrad Grebel University College, he was a chief architect of a five-year strategic plan and led program and curricular review. In both of these contexts, his leadership led to significant increases in enrollment. As Assistant Dean of Information and Communication at the Graduate School at Loyola University Chicago, he led program review, shaped digital strategy and developed the first graduate health plan. At U-M's Poverty Solutions, he managed Washtenaw County programs and pioneered a series of design workshops exploring public policy innovation focused on marginalized populations. He focuses on questions of ethics and the human in his teaching and scholarship. His books include "The Gift of Ethics" (2014) and "Encountering Earth" (2018). He has taught courses in social justice, environmentalism, digital culture, ethics and religion. He is also a creative who explores the edges of the human, especially through music.