Director
Disaster Recovery Nonprofit Groups
Michelle Meyer
LAUP
Texas A&M University
michelle.meyer@tamu.edu
Biography
Michelle Meyer is the Director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center and an Associate Professor in the Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning Department at Texas A&M University. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University (CSU). She earned her BA from Murray State University in Murray, KY in Sociology. Dr. Meyer's research interests include disaster resilience and mitigation, environmental sociology and community sustainability, and the interplay between environmental conditions and inequality. Her teaching expertise is in research methods including introductory statistics, research design, and qualitative methods. She also teaches speciality courses in disaster, environmental sociology, social stratification, and community. She implements mechanisms for undergraduate and graduate student involvement in research that supports their education and helps communities become more resilient. She has run successful National Science Foundation funded undergraduate research experience supplements as well as internally funded internships and research experiences. She has involved more than 40 undergraduates in research in her career, and published reports, conference posters, and journal articles with students as co-authors. Undergraduates have presented research results at conferences in Colorado, San Antonio, Dallas, Corpus Christi, and College Station.
Publications with undergrads: Meyer, Michelle, Mason Alexander-Hawk*, J. Carlee Purdum, Haley Yelle*, Jordan Vick**, Adrian Rodriguez**, Saul Romero**, and Kenneth Taylor. 2023. “Resilience in recovery?: Understanding the extent, structure, and operations of nonprofits meant to address disaster survivors’ unmet needs” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 52(4): 979-1005. https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640221138265 and Villarreal**, Melissa and Michelle Meyer. 2020. “Women’s Experiences in Natural and Technological Disasters in Texas.” Disasters 44(2): 285-306.