Newswise — Bethesda, Md – Retired Air Force dentist Thomas R. Schneid, DMD, was named as the new Executive Dean of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) Postgraduate Dental College. USU President Charles L. Rice, M.D., made the announcement following a nationwide search. As Dean of USU’s Postgraduate Dental College, Schneid will oversee the Army, Navy and Air Force Postgraduate Dental Schools, which consist of 18 programs in seven locations across the country. In 2015, 57 students are projected to graduate with a Master of Sciences degree in Oral Biology and an expected total of 186 students will be under instruction at the start of the new academic year. Schneid succeeds founding Executive Dean, retired Army Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Patrick Sculley, former chief of the Army Dental Corps and deputy Surgeon General. Sculley, who was dual-hatted as Executive Dean and USU’s Southern Region senior vice president, will remain in the latter capacity.
"The University and Postgraduate Dental College are indeed fortunate in having Dr. Tom Schneid assume the duties of Executive Dean. He is a broadly experienced educator and expert clinician with superb leadership skills. He is well known to the military community and dental profession. He has earned great credibility with the PDC faculty and his colleagues of dental academia through his previous duties as Dean of the Air Force Postgraduate Dental School. He is ideally prepared to lead the PDC to ever greater success,” said Sculley.
“I am very pleased that Dr. Schneid will once again be a part of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences as Executive Dean of the Postgraduate Dental College. He brings a wealth of experience in the dental community as well as dental academia, and his unquestioned leadership abilities will be of enormous value in building on Dr. Sculley’s legacy," said Rice.
Prior to his retirement from the Air Force in 2013, Schneid served as the founding dean of the Air Force Postgraduate Dental School in San Antonio, Texas. He earned his undergraduate degree in 1975 from Princeton University. In July 1976, he was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy and attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine on a military health professions scholarship, earning his Doctor of Dental Medicine degree in 1979. Schneid spent the next three years as a Navy dentist then left active duty for private practice, while remaining in the Naval Reserves.
In 1986, he returned to active military service in the Air Force and spent the next several years completing a prosthodontics residency program, followed by a maxillofacial prosthetics fellowship at Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio. In 1994, he became a Diplomate of the American Board of Prosthodontics and a Fellow of the American College of Prosthodontics. He was later named a fellow of the American Academy of Maxillofacial Prosthetics, American College of Dentists and the International College of Dentists.
“I am honored and humbled to have the opportunity to join the leadership team of this esteemed University. I look forward to working with the three Service deans and their world-class staff of educators as we continue to build on the many successes realized during Dr. Sculley’s term,” Schneid said, “preparing our graduates to provide high quality, scientifically-based dental care for our active duty force, both at home and in the deployed environment.”
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The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), founded by an act of Congress in 1972, is the academic heart of the Military Health System. USU students are primarily active duty uniformed officers in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Public Health Service who receive specialized education in tropical and infectious diseases, TBI and PTSD, disaster response and humanitarian assistance, global health, and acute trauma care. A large percentage of the university’s more than 5,200 physician and 790 advanced practice nursing alumni are supporting operations around the world, offering their leadership and expertise. USU also has graduate programs in biomedical sciences and public health committed to excellence in research, and in oral biology. The University's research program covers a wide range of clinical and basic science important to both the military and public health. For more information, visit www.usuhs.edu.
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