News
07-24-08
Jerry Carey
973-972-5000
careyge@umdnj.edu
UMDNJ Trustees Approve Dean for Stratford Medical School
NEWARK—The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) Board of Trustees has approved the appointment of Dr. Thomas A. Cavalieri, FACOI, FACP, AGSF, as dean of the UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford. The approval by the Board of Trustees confirms the recommendation made last month by Dr. William F. Owen, Jr., president of UMDNJ. Dr. Cavalieri has served as interim dean of the school since April 2006.
“Dr. Cavalieri has been a tireless advocate for the elderly and for osteopathic medical education,” Dr. Owen said. “Throughout his nearly 30 years of service to UMDNJ, he has been a leader in our university’s shared missions of excellence in education, research, healthcare and community service. I am pleased that our extensive search for a new dean led us to Dr. Cavalieri and am delighted that he has agreed to help us to advance UMDNJ’s mission for many years to come.”
“I’m honored and humbled by the confidence that the Board of Trustees and President Owen have placed in me, and excited by the challenge of leading UMDNJ-SOM,” Dr. Cavalieri said. “Our vision and our mission at the school are clear. We seek to become the country’s best osteopathic medical school and to provide New Jersey and our nation with clinically skillful, compassionate and culturally competent physicians from diverse backgrounds. I’m looking forward to working with our school’s students, faculty and staff – as well as with the many talented people at, Kennedy Health System, our principal hospital partner, and our other academic and clinical affiliates – in pursuit of those goals.”
Dr. Cavalieri, a nationally recognized leader in geriatric healthcare and education, is the founding director of the medical school’s acclaimed New Jersey Institute for Successful Aging. His guidance of the geriatric health and education programs at the UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine has resulted in the school being selected for eight consecutive years as one of the nation’s top schools for geriatric medical education by U.S. News & World Report.
Dr. Cavalieri is the UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine’s first Endowed Chair for Primary Care Research and is the former chairman of its Department of Medicine. Among his many leadership roles, Dr. Cavalieri is a past president of the American College of Osteopathic Internists, a former president and chair of the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners, and the immediate past chair of the Advisory Committee on Interdisciplinary, Community-Based Linkages at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - Health Resources and Services Administration. He has been a member and former chair of the New Jersey Commission on Aging, and served on New Jersey’s Drug Utilization Review Board. In 2005, he was honored with the Associate Administrator’s Achievement Award for “Expanding Interdisciplinary Health Education” from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Health Resources and Services Administration. He has received numerous teaching awards and, in 2007, was inducted into the American Osteopathic Association Mentor Hall of Fame. He was named “Physician of the Year” by the New Jersey Association of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons, and, for several consecutive years, has been recognized as one of the area’s “Top Docs” by Philadelphia Magazine, Consumer Union Checkbook, New Jersey Monthly, South Jersey Magazine, and SJ Magazine.
Dr. Cavalieri, 57, received his undergraduate degree from St. Mary’s College and his medical degree from the College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery, in Des Moines, Iowa. He and his wife, Donna, reside in Mullica Hill, and are the parents of four children.
UMDNJ is the nation's largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,500 students attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and its only school of public health, on five campuses. Last year, there were more than two million patient visits to UMDNJ facilities and faculty at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, a mental health and addiction services network.
