Dr. Bender joined the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine (UA CVM) in March 2020 to develop faculty and staff for its innovative, TBL-rich curriculum. She directs the Office of Educational Research and Development (OER&D), whose mission is to develop faculty and academic staff and support collaborative educational research.
Dr. Bender received her DVM at Michigan State University and her residency and PhD in Clinical Pathology from Virginia Tech. Before joining the UA CVM, she held faculty positions at the Colleges of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech and Iowa State University (ISU), where she used TBL extensively in her clinical pathology courses. For 25 years, Holly led a multidisciplinary research team that designed and developed open-source software for TBL prework using the tenets of deliberate practice to set students up for success in TBL exercises.

For ten years before being recruited to the UA CVM, Holly was in charge of faculty development as the associate director of ISU's central campus teaching center and directed ISU's Preparing Future Faculty Program. During that time, she had the privilege of being personally mentored by both Larry Michaelsen and Dean Parmelee and went on to create an over 250-member TBL faculty learning community with members from all 8 ISU colleges. While at the ISU teaching center, she served on the national leadership team of the Center for Integration of Research Teaching and Learning (CIRTL), a 43-university consortium dedicated to transforming STEM education by preparing PhD students and postdocs for evidence-based teaching practices.