Valhalla-based New York Medical College (NYMC) has named Neil W. Schluger as the new dean of its School of Medicine. He will succeed Jerry L. Nadler, who has been serving as dean since March 2019. Schluger assumes the post on August 15.
Schluger is an internationally recognized pulmonologist and has served as the Barbara and William Rosenthal Chair of the Department of Medicine and professor of medicine at NYMC and director of medicine at Westchester Medical Center since 2020.
“After an extensive national search done by a committee with broad representation, there was a clear consensus that our own chair of medicine was by far the best candidate for dean,” said Alan Kadish, president of NYMC and Touro University.
Previously, Dr. Schluger was chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He was professor of medicine, epidemiology and environmental health sciences and director of the Population and Global Health Track for the Scholars Projects Program and co-director of the Programs in Education and Global and Population Health for the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.
Schluger is board-certified in pulmonary disease and internal medicine. He earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He was chief resident at St. Luke”™s Hospital in New York and completed a three-year pulmonary and critical care medicine fellowship at The New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center.
At NYMC, Schluger has been leading a department of more than 425 faculty members in addition to teaching more than 800 medical students and residents. In 2021, he took on the additional role of associate dean for clinical and translational research for the School of Medicine.
Schluger is a founder of the East Africa Training Initiative (EATI) in Pulmonary Medicine. It’s the first training program of its kind in Ethiopia and the broader East African region. Before the launch of EATI, Ethiopia had only one pulmonologist for its 110 million people.
Schluger has been a principal investigator in the Tuberculosis Trials Consortium, an international collaboration sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 25 years and was the chair of the consortium from 2000-2016. He is co-editor and a co-author of “The Tobacco Atlas,” which describes the extent and consequences of tobacco use. It is published by Vital Strategies, a global not-for-profit organization devoted to public health issues, and the American Cancer Society. Schluger is on Vital Strategies’ board. He also is the author of more than 200 articles, chapters and books,
Schluger has been a principal investigator in the Tuberculosis Trials Consortium, an international collaboration sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 25 years and was the chair of the consortium from 2000 to 2016.
Edward C. Halperin, chancellor and chief executive officer at NYMC said that Schluger was his first choice the 70 evaluations he received regarding finalists for the position of dean.
“I look forward to working with the school’s leadership, faculty, hospital affiliates and students to continue this tradition and to creating exciting new programs and initiatives that will prepare the next generation of physicians to achieve excellence in the great NYMC tradition,” Schluger said.
