Michele Hockett Cooper

Originally from northern Montana, Michele Hockett Cooper has experience with a wide range of agriculture and food systems: lifelong experience on her family's large-scale wheat and cattle operation in Montana; designing and running a small organic garden program at a children's summer camp; and supporting local producers in the Austin area through her past involvement with Green Gate Farms, the New Farm Institute, and the Sustainable Food Center Farmers' Markets. Michele holds a Master's degree in Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies from Michigan State University, and throughout her career she has worked with farmers and students across the lifespan and the globe, from Malawi to Kazakhstan, and Montana to Texas. Michele received teacher training through her service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan where she worked in a secondary school as a TEFL educator, and she is happy to serve as the Peace Corps Prep Faculty Advisor at UT Austin. She is also Adjunct Faculty at Austin Community College and she teaches Basic Principles of Sustainable Agriculture through the Sustainable Agriculture Entrepreneurship Program. 

Michele began working at the University of Texas at Austin as a Project Coordinator/Lead Educator for the TX Sprouts research project through the Davis Lab (Department of Nutritional Sciences). In her role with TX Sprouts, Michele assisted with anthropometric data collection and taught gardening, healthy living, and nutrition lessons to Title I elementary school students throughout the greater Austin area. She also contributed to the creation and implementation of sustainability programs for school gardens through TX Sprouts, and she continues to support central TX school gardens by facilitating garden-centered trainings for local teachers.

Michele directs the EdEN Intern Program (a subset of the EdEN Lab), which places upper division Nutrition students in local elementary school gardens as intern teachers. These students implement garden and nutrition lessons with PK-5th grade students, with the ultimate goals of: supporting school gardens; training classroom teachers in garden utilization; exposing UT Nutrition students to real-life applications of public health nutrition programs; and increasing healthy food knowledge and self-efficacy among young learners and their families. 

Michele is passionate about education, food systems, and farming, and she loves teaching UT students about these topics.