Rate My Professor Michelle Cork

Michelle Cork is a Lecturer in the Curtin School of Population Health within the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University, based at the Curtin Perth campus under the Office of the Provost portfolio. She plays a key role in dietetics education, particularly in the Master of Dietetics course. Responding to student feedback from 2023 to 2024 that highlighted concerns about the relevance, clarity, and learning value of the traditional 3000-word Business Case report, which students found disengaging and lacking practical application, Cork redesigned the assignment. The updated format seeks to enhance student engagement, foster creativity, improve real-world relevance, and align with contemporary dietetic practice while maintaining alignment with unit learning outcomes. This educational innovation was showcased in her 2026 poster presentation titled "Business case redesign: Engaging dietetics students in real-world practice" at the Nutrition & Dietetics conference. Cork also participated in the celebration marking 50 years of Dietetics & Nutrition at Curtin University in 2025.

Prior to her academic appointment at Curtin University, Michelle Cork served as Senior Dietitian at the State Adult Burns Unit, Western Australia's Fiona Stanley Hospital. In this clinical role, she led research on nutritional interventions for burn patients, including an assessment of energy and protein intake in patients with greater than 5% total body surface area (TBSA) burns, as featured in the South Metropolitan Health Service Research Report 2017. She presented on energy expenditure increases following burn injuries at the 2016 Nutrition & Dietetics conference and co-authored a systematic review protocol on nutrition in burn injuries in 2019 with colleagues including Alexa McArthur, Helen Elizabeth Douglas, and Fiona M. Wood. Additionally, Cork co-presented "Maintaining professional identity within a contemporary allied health management model" with Jane Porter and Adam Murphy from Fiona Stanley Hospital at the same 2016 conference. Her work underscores contributions to clinical nutrition research and professional development in dietetics.