As a lab instructor for General Biology, the Department of Biology’s introductory course,
Professor Alexis Snyder facilitates student research and teaches common field and laboratory
techniques, from sample collection during fieldwork to use of devices and analytic software in
the lab.
She has been a licensed physical therapist since 2001. She has worked in a variety of rehab
settings and has experience with sports, orthopedic, neurological and cardiac patients. She
currently works primarily with the geriatric population and serves as an administrator at an
outpatient facility in West Michigan.
Professor Snyder has been a General Biology lab instructor at Hope since 2021. She also serves
as a clinical instructor of physical therapy through multiple Michigan colleges and universities.

AREAS OF Expertise

• Human biology
• Biomechanics
• Geriatrics

EDUCATION

• M.S., physical therapy, Grand Valley State University, 1999
• B.S., health science, Grand Valley State University, 1996

Outside The College

Professor Snyder’s three kids are in college or will be soon, which helps her connect with Hope
students. She enjoys outdoor activities including paddleboarding, cross-country skiing, and
hiking in the woods with her Labrador retriever mix and beagle mix adopted from an animal
shelter. Her childhood summers were spent in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where her father
was a youth camp director. Each year she and her sister had to swim in Lake Superior; if they
didn’t do it voluntarily, their father would push them in. She still makes a trip to the UP every
summer, and always swims in the lake.