Joan C. Hendricks, V.M.D., Ph.D.
The Gilbert S. Kahn Dean of Veterinary Medicine
Joan Hendricks became the twelfth dean of the School on January 1, 2006, succeeding Alan M. Kelly. She is the third female dean of a veterinary school in the United States.
Joan has served on the faculty of the School for more than 20 years. In 2001 she become the first woman to hold an endowed professorship at the School when she was named the Henry and Corinne R. Bower Professor of Small Animal Medicine. In addition to serving as Chief of critical care in the Department of Clinical Studies at Philadelphia, Joan is founding director of the Veterinary Clinical Investigation Center and holds a secondary appointment as professor in the Department of Medicine at Penn’s School of Medicine. Joan also has served in a leadership position in the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association.
In the area of critical care, Joan has played a key role in enhancing teaching and patient care. With colleagues at the Matthew J. Ryan Veterinary Hospital, she was instrumental in establishing a Center for Critical Care at the Hospital, which brought the Emergency Service, Intensive Care Unit and the Anesthesia Service together into a single section. Joan has significantly advanced the stature and importance of the School’s clinical investigation capabilities by successfully recruiting highly regarded tenure-track faculty in the Department of Clinical Studies, and by establishing an innovative partnership with Pfizer Animal Health to support clinical trials.
Joan’s work has been widely published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Journal of Applied Physiology, and she is frequently invited to lecture at major conferences around the world. During her recent sabbatical year, she investigated how molecular biology could be applied to neuroscience, specifically to the field of sleep and sleep disorders, in which Joan is a recognized expert. She has studied bulldogs extensively and recently published pioneering studies on the molecular biology of sleep in fruit flies in the high-impact journals Nature Neuroscience and Neuron.
In 1979 and 1980, Joan earned her V.M.D. and Ph.D. from the School. She also carried out her residency and postdoctoral fellowship at Penn. She has a B.S. in biology and psychology from Yale University.
