Chris Smith is an associate professor of biology at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, United States.
[2] He had the distinction of being the university's first faculty member to receive a CAREER award.
[3] With Emily Drew, Smith also teaches the interdisciplinary course "Race, Racism, and Human Genetics",[4][5] which examines how scientific endeavors had been affected by racial outlooks.
[6] Smith has studied the northward migration of yucca and joshua trees, and the possible hybridization of the Eastern and Western varieties, either of which may be related to climate change.
[9] On October 8, 2012, he and fellow Willamette associate professor Emily Drew, an anti-racism workshop facilitator, led a discussion on the misrepresentation of race and racial differences, presented at the Bagdad Theater and Pub in Portland, Oregon.