Faculty Update: Michelle Bezanson
By Virginia Matzek
We in ESS are mourning our friend and colleague, Dr. Michelle Bezanson of the SCU Anthropology Department, who died on April 16. Many former ESS students will remember Michelle for her popular and thought-provoking core classes in Pop Culture and Bioanthropology and the C&I series Measuring Humanity. Others had life-changing experiences with field research in her legendary Costa Rica summer course in primatology, or belonged to the natural history student group she advised, SCU Gone Wild. In the classroom, Michelle was notable for her ability to cross the many subdisciplines of anthropology, primatology, and ecology; her cool outfits, dyed hair, and zany sense of humor; her encouragement of artistic and creative expression in any kind of course; and especially her sincere and genuine care for students. She won SCU’s highest teaching award, the David E. Logothetti Award, in 2018.
Michelle was the faculty director in Dunne (Modern Perspectives) for several years and served as Anthropology department chair and as RLC director. In her administrative roles she challenged the campus to be more inclusive and to connect better with students’ lived experience. For example, as RLC director she pushed (successfully) to have Know My Name, Chanel Miller’s wrenching memoir of college sexual assault, be the Community Read for academic year 2022-23, over the objections of administrators who thought it was too intense for first-year students.
She was a well-known and prominent researcher in primatology, one of only two SCU fellows inducted into the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science. In complement to her scientific work, Michelle was a prolific illustrator, and she always sought to bridge the gap between art and science. One of her last acts as an educator was to Zoom into the ENVS 144 Baja Natural History class, in late February when she was quite ill with cancer, to talk about the intersection of art and science and the importance of drawing as a way of focusing a natural history observation. One student wrote later about this half-hour Zoom call: “After listening to Michelle Bezanson I felt incredibly motivated. Michelle was adamant about the fact that when it comes to art, you just need to keep letting yourself do it instead of stopping to think about it too much. Literally right after class ended I went home, sat outside, and doodled. I honestly felt like it has helped me take a big step into allowing myself to do art.”
We miss her terribly. If you have a reminiscence to share about how Michelle touched your life, please write a message to Virginia Matzek and she’ll see that it is shared with her parents, Liz and Warren Bezanson, and her husband, Hari Mix.
Michelle's illustration of a pangolin, one of her favorite animals.