Dr. Schnell has acted as chair of the Department of Molecular & Integrative Physiology in the Medical School from 2017 to 2021. During his time leading the largest basic science department at Michigan Medicine, he helped it maintain its status as the top National Institutes of Health-funded physiology department in the nation. Under his leadership, the department increased its total annual operating revenue from $20.7 to $26.9 million and total cash and investments from $11.2 to $17.2 million. The overall department endowment increased  from $5.4 to $8.3 million during his tenure, he successfully completed fundraising for two endowed collegiate professorships, and he established an endowment to support postdoctoral program activities.
During his tenure, six faculty were elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of the Latin American Academy of Science. He stewarded an increase of the diversity of trainees in the department's educational programs, which now consist of nearly one-third underrepresented minorities. Between 2016 and 2017, in collaboration with Dr. David Brown and the Office for Health Equity and Inclusion, he led the development, coordination and implementation of the strategic plan for diversity, equity and inclusion of the 10 basic science departments/units in the Medical School.
As an educator, Schnell co-organized the establishment of a summer fellowship program to attract undergraduate students to gain hands-on research experiences in the department. He also led the independent funding of a summer fellowship program through an NIDDK R25 grant "Interfacing Computation and Engineering with Digestive and Metabolic Physiology Program." This program served as a template to fund two additional R25 programs, effectively creating an umbrella program which attracts approximately 75 students annually from across the nation to pursue research in our medical school.