Newsroom
Meet the New School of Medicine Dean - Dr. Neil Schluger
Dr. Schluger Brings a Wealth of Experience as a Clinician, Researcher and Educator to His New Role
November 20, 2023
Dr. Neil Schluger, Dean of the School of Medicine, walking with students on campus
An internationally recognized pulmonologist, Neil Schluger, M.D., was named dean of the School of Medicine (SOM) in August 2023. Well-known to the New York Medical College (NYMC) community, Dr. Schluger initially joined the College as Barbara and William Rosenthal Chair of the Department of Medicine in 2020 and brings a wealth of experience as a clinician, researcher and educator to his new role.
During his inspiring career, Dr. Schluger has distinguished himself on the world stage as a founder of the East Africa Training Initiative, the first fellowship training program in pulmonary and critical care medicine in Ethiopia and the broader East African region and asa principal investigator in the Tuberculosis Trials Consortium, an international collaboration sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Schluger recently sat down to discuss what inspired his own passion for medicine, his vision for the future of the SOM and the challenges and opportunities he sees in training physicians today to succeed as leaders in their fields.
(SPEECH)
NEIL W. SCHLUGER:
(DESCRIPTION)
Text, Meet the new Dean of the School of Medicine. Neil W. Schluger, M.D., Dean of the School of Medicine and Professor of Medicine. Logo, New York Medical College, A Member of Touro University, School of Medicine.
(SPEECH)
Well, I'm enormously excited to be the Dean of the School of Medicine at New York Medical College. New York Medical College is a school with a wonderful history, I think, a very proud and honorable tradition. It's been committed to providing the highest quality of medical education for a long time and also to bringing people into medicine who often have been excluded from medicine and medical education, and that's a tradition I hope to continue. The faculty, staff, and students have been incredibly welcoming. It's a wonderful community and a wonderful culture here at NYMC, and I really couldn't be happier and more excited to get started.
(DESCRIPTION)
What is your vision for the School of Medicine?
(SPEECH)
I want the School of Medicine to be an exciting place for students to learn how to become doctors. I think the school should be a place where students can be exposed to the great breadth and depth of what medicine is, something where they can experience what it means to be a clinician at the bedside. They can experience the excitement of research and developing new ways to treat patients and new ways of understanding how medicine can help people. I want it to be a place where students can be exposed to the impact they can have as physicians in areas, like public health and public policy. I want this to be a place where students come in maybe not even understanding the breadth and the opportunities that medicine can offer them as a career, but leaving knowing that every door is open to them in any aspect of medicine they wish to pursue and that they can walk through that door with confidence and excitement about what their career will hold for them.
(DESCRIPTION)
Share a moment pivotal to your career in medicine?
(SPEECH)
My father was a physician, and I grew up admiring his work very much and seeing how much his patients loved him and appreciated what he was doing for them. So I think I was exposed to that at a very early age. My own career in medicine has involved direct patient care, but also, it has had, really, a very large commitment to research and to teaching. I've always been in a setting of full time academic medicine. I think that setting, where you combine patient care, research, and education, is a very fulfilling one.
My personal feeling is that patient care, research, and education are really all different aspects of the same thing. The desire to do all of those and combine those, patient care, research, and education, I think, is what has led me into leadership roles within medical schools and in medical education. The desire to show students the entire possibility of what medicine can do, I think, is really what motivates me and makes me excited about running and leading a medical school.
(DESCRIPTION)
What are the biggest challenges and opportunities in medical education and how do you plan to address them?
(SPEECH)
I think the opportunities for training medical students today are enormous and, really, have never been better. Medicine, I think, is still one of the great professions. You get to go to work every day knowing that your job is to make someone's life better. And I think that's a rare privilege, and something for which we should be grateful, and represents, really, the greatest opportunity that we have as physicians, as educators, and as students have as well. So I think the opportunity is the same that it's always been to make someone's life better and the most direct way possible, and that's a privilege for which we should be grateful.
The challenges to medical education, well, I think there are several. Medicine is more and more complicated. There's a lot more to learn. That's also very exciting, because we can do more. But it's a challenge. How does one assimilate all of the information that's available now in science, and medicine, and distill that down into something that helps someone at the bedside? And how do we best equip students to do that is an enormous challenge.
Certainly, there's a financial challenge for students in terms of financing medical education. I think that's something, as a country, we have to really work to come to grips with. But I think the opportunities and the rewards make any of the challenges that come along with medical education very much worth the effort.
(DESCRIPTION)
How do you achieve a good worklife balance?
(SPEECH)
Work life balance is certainly an important consideration for all of us, no matter what our jobs are. One of the things that I think about, though, in terms of work life balance is that, if your work is something that you find meaningful, if you enjoy it, if it gives value to your life, in some way, it becomes part of your life, and you shouldn't think of work and life as completely separate, you know? I think, in the best circumstance, work is one of the things that gives meaning to your life. But having said that, we all need time to do things that we enjoy and want to relax.
For me, personally, I love to read. I love to travel. I love to take photographs. I love to sit on the beach, and stare at the ocean, and do nothing from time to time, and spend time with my wife and my family.
(DESCRIPTION)
What advice would you give to incoming medical students looking to make the most out of their education?
(SPEECH)
I think the best thing that medical students can do to get the most out of their medical education is to not be afraid to expose themselves to things that they have never tried before, have never thought about doing before, perhaps, were afraid of doing. I think many people come to medical school a certain idea of what it means to be a physician based on their prior experience or people they've known, and that's helpful and wonderful. But I think every student during the course of their medical education should try one thing that they never thought of doing before, whether that's a research project, whether that's spending time on an elective or as an intern in the Department of Health, or working in policy, or spending time in the operating room when you're sure that the last thing on Earth you were ever going to do is be a surgeon. So I think the way to get the most out of medical education is to really expose yourself to as much of medicine as you can, to interact with as many of your peers as you can, to learn from the other medical students from their diverse experience and backgrounds, and, really, to take advantage of everything that New York Medical College has to offer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(DESCRIPTION)
Logo, New York Medical College, A Member of Touro University, School of Medicine.
NEIL W. SCHLUGER:
(DESCRIPTION)
Text, Meet the new Dean of the School of Medicine. Neil W. Schluger, M.D., Dean of the School of Medicine and Professor of Medicine. Logo, New York Medical College, A Member of Touro University, School of Medicine.
(SPEECH)
Well, I'm enormously excited to be the Dean of the School of Medicine at New York Medical College. New York Medical College is a school with a wonderful history, I think, a very proud and honorable tradition. It's been committed to providing the highest quality of medical education for a long time and also to bringing people into medicine who often have been excluded from medicine and medical education, and that's a tradition I hope to continue. The faculty, staff, and students have been incredibly welcoming. It's a wonderful community and a wonderful culture here at NYMC, and I really couldn't be happier and more excited to get started.
(DESCRIPTION)
What is your vision for the School of Medicine?
(SPEECH)
I want the School of Medicine to be an exciting place for students to learn how to become doctors. I think the school should be a place where students can be exposed to the great breadth and depth of what medicine is, something where they can experience what it means to be a clinician at the bedside. They can experience the excitement of research and developing new ways to treat patients and new ways of understanding how medicine can help people. I want it to be a place where students can be exposed to the impact they can have as physicians in areas, like public health and public policy. I want this to be a place where students come in maybe not even understanding the breadth and the opportunities that medicine can offer them as a career, but leaving knowing that every door is open to them in any aspect of medicine they wish to pursue and that they can walk through that door with confidence and excitement about what their career will hold for them.
(DESCRIPTION)
Share a moment pivotal to your career in medicine?
(SPEECH)
My father was a physician, and I grew up admiring his work very much and seeing how much his patients loved him and appreciated what he was doing for them. So I think I was exposed to that at a very early age. My own career in medicine has involved direct patient care, but also, it has had, really, a very large commitment to research and to teaching. I've always been in a setting of full time academic medicine. I think that setting, where you combine patient care, research, and education, is a very fulfilling one.
My personal feeling is that patient care, research, and education are really all different aspects of the same thing. The desire to do all of those and combine those, patient care, research, and education, I think, is what has led me into leadership roles within medical schools and in medical education. The desire to show students the entire possibility of what medicine can do, I think, is really what motivates me and makes me excited about running and leading a medical school.
(DESCRIPTION)
What are the biggest challenges and opportunities in medical education and how do you plan to address them?
(SPEECH)
I think the opportunities for training medical students today are enormous and, really, have never been better. Medicine, I think, is still one of the great professions. You get to go to work every day knowing that your job is to make someone's life better. And I think that's a rare privilege, and something for which we should be grateful, and represents, really, the greatest opportunity that we have as physicians, as educators, and as students have as well. So I think the opportunity is the same that it's always been to make someone's life better and the most direct way possible, and that's a privilege for which we should be grateful.
The challenges to medical education, well, I think there are several. Medicine is more and more complicated. There's a lot more to learn. That's also very exciting, because we can do more. But it's a challenge. How does one assimilate all of the information that's available now in science, and medicine, and distill that down into something that helps someone at the bedside? And how do we best equip students to do that is an enormous challenge.
Certainly, there's a financial challenge for students in terms of financing medical education. I think that's something, as a country, we have to really work to come to grips with. But I think the opportunities and the rewards make any of the challenges that come along with medical education very much worth the effort.
(DESCRIPTION)
How do you achieve a good worklife balance?
(SPEECH)
Work life balance is certainly an important consideration for all of us, no matter what our jobs are. One of the things that I think about, though, in terms of work life balance is that, if your work is something that you find meaningful, if you enjoy it, if it gives value to your life, in some way, it becomes part of your life, and you shouldn't think of work and life as completely separate, you know? I think, in the best circumstance, work is one of the things that gives meaning to your life. But having said that, we all need time to do things that we enjoy and want to relax.
For me, personally, I love to read. I love to travel. I love to take photographs. I love to sit on the beach, and stare at the ocean, and do nothing from time to time, and spend time with my wife and my family.
(DESCRIPTION)
What advice would you give to incoming medical students looking to make the most out of their education?
(SPEECH)
I think the best thing that medical students can do to get the most out of their medical education is to not be afraid to expose themselves to things that they have never tried before, have never thought about doing before, perhaps, were afraid of doing. I think many people come to medical school a certain idea of what it means to be a physician based on their prior experience or people they've known, and that's helpful and wonderful. But I think every student during the course of their medical education should try one thing that they never thought of doing before, whether that's a research project, whether that's spending time on an elective or as an intern in the Department of Health, or working in policy, or spending time in the operating room when you're sure that the last thing on Earth you were ever going to do is be a surgeon. So I think the way to get the most out of medical education is to really expose yourself to as much of medicine as you can, to interact with as many of your peers as you can, to learn from the other medical students from their diverse experience and backgrounds, and, really, to take advantage of everything that New York Medical College has to offer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(DESCRIPTION)
Logo, New York Medical College, A Member of Touro University, School of Medicine.
