She joined the department in 2009 as an assistant professor and was promoted in 2015. Her research areas are soybean breeding and genetics and genetics of disease resistance and quality. McHale has a nationally recognized program focusing on the characterization and manipulation of natural variation in crop plants, primarily soybean and chili peppers. Her research goal is to identify the genes conferring disease resistance, yield and quality traits, and in soybean, to examine how best to integrate these alleles for the development of improved varieties. To accomplish these goals, she uses new technologies and a cross-disciplinary approach, including genetics and genomics, evolutionary studies, bioinformatics, and plant pathology.