Dr. Laura Bechard attended Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a minor in music in 2004.  She then moved on to graduate school in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia, where she received a PhD in Genetics in 2010.  While pursuing her PhD, she worked in the field of telomere dynamics, with a focus on how telomeres relate to cancer.  After receiving her PhD, she moved to Nashville, where she spent 4 years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University, continuing her studies on telomeres.  She has worked at Cumberland University since 2014, where she teaches several biology courses.