{"id":1372,"date":"2017-03-06T15:57:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T15:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mc.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltmedicine\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2021-08-11T19:40:21","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T19:40:21","slug":"alumni-profile-mary-nettleman-m-d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/alumni-profile-mary-nettleman-m-d\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Profile: Mary Nettleman, M.D."},"content":{"rendered":"

Med School Dean Credits VUSM Influence, Support<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Photo by Greg Latza<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since joining the University of South Dakota in 2012, Mary Nettleman, M.D., can\u2019t begin to count the times she\u2019s been asked if she\u2019s the first female dean of the university\u2019s Sanford School of Medicine. She is.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople ask me how it feels to be a woman dean, and I tell them that I\u2019ve been a woman all of my life, so it doesn\u2019t feel that strange to me,\u201d she said, laughing. \u201cI often hear from younger women that I\u2019m a role model for them, but I also stand on the shoulders of giants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nettleman graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1981, and she credits many \u2018giants\u2019 she encountered at Vanderbilt for paving her way in academic medicine, including preparing her to become dean of South Dakota\u2019s only medical school.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs dean of a medical school, you have to understand a lot about medical education, clinical work and research,\u201d she said. \u201cVanderbilt gave me a very strong foundation in all of those areas. And the teachers there really cared about how we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vanderbilt\u2019s faculty were nurturing, but they also demanded excellence, Nettleman said. In particular, she recalled Tom Brittingham, M.D., the Department of Medicine\u2019s first residency director and a revered faculty member.<\/p>\n

\u201cThird-year medical students had to write long H & Ps (history and physical exams) on patients,\u201d Nettleman said. \u201cIf someone put in their notes \u2018possible history of rheumatic fever,\u2019 Dr. Brittingham would call the patient\u2019s mother and ask her directly. Then, when that medical student came in and said, \u201cThere is a questionable history\u2026,\u2019 Dr. Brittingham would say, \u2018Why is it questionable? Did you do the necessary background work?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>While at Vanderbilt, Nettleman worked with John Oates, M.D., professor of Pharmacology, who ignited her love for research. She went on to lead investigations in areas such as women\u2019s preconception health and infectious diseases. Notably, she served as principal investigator for a multisite National Institutes of Health career development initiative, Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women\u2019s Health.<\/p>\n

Today, she doesn\u2019t have much time for research, but she enjoys the challenges of leading a well-reputed medical school, with outstanding metrics such as 100 percent of students passing the United States Medical Licensing Examination-Step 2-CK in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this role, you\u2019ve got to build on successes, but also be sure that you are doing the same thing that Vanderbilt did for me, providing a very strong educational base so people can follow their dreams and do it well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Med School Dean Credits VUSM Influence, Support   Since joining the University of South Dakota in 2012, Mary Nettleman, M.D., can\u2019t begin to count the times she\u2019s been asked if she\u2019s the first female dean of the university\u2019s Sanford School of Medicine. She is. \u201cPeople ask me how it feels to be a woman dean,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vm-alumni-profile","category-winter-2017"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcDnub-m8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3076,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions\/3076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}