Laura Schweitzer, PhD

Dr. Schweitzer became president of Union Graduate College in January, 2009. She has a wide range of administrative experience, having served in key roles at SUNY Upstate, Syracuse University, Bassett Healthcare and the University of Louisville. Prior to her administrative career, Schweitzer, a Duke and Washington University trained neurobiologist, was known for her contributions to our understanding of the relationship between structural and functional development in the auditory brainstem and deafness.

Schweitzer received a PhD in Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. She went on to complete a post-doctoral fellowship at Duke University and was named Research Faculty in 1985. Three years later, Dr. Schweitzer moved to the University of Louisville. She has published more than 50 scholarly articles and accumulated grant and contract funding in excess of $5 million primarily from federal sources including NIH, NSF and HRSA.

Believed to be the first female PhD to ever lead a US medical school, Schweitzer first served as vice dean for administration and faculty affairs at the University of Louisville and then dean of Allied Health Sciences. During her tenure there, the University of Louisville saw a seven-fold increase in research funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Just before coming to Union Graduate College, as Chief Academic Officer/Bassett Healthcare and Founding Regional Dean, Cooperstown Campus/Albany Medical College, Schweitzer pioneered creation of a new two-year medical campus model, designed to respond to the dangerous physician shortage in rural New York. Prior to that assignment, she served as Vice President for Academic Affairs/SUNY Upstate and Vice Provost/Syracuse University. She has served as faculty for both the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program.

Dr. Schweitzer now serves on two national boards – Washington University and the Heuser Hearing Institute. Locally, Dr. Schweitzer serves on the Board of Directors of the Council for Economic Growth (CEG), Ellis Medicine and the Council of Independent Colleges (cIcu) and Albany Medical Center Horizons Committee, a task force of Capital Region health care leaders convened to design a blueprint for better health care delivery in the region.