Trauma surgeon Amy Goldberg gets permanent medical school dean post at Temple

Longtime trauma surgeon Amy Goldberg, who has been serving as interim dean of Temple University’s medical school, was named to the permanent post Thursday.

Her appointment follows a national search. She is the medical school’s first female dean.

“A nationally celebrated clinician, scholar and Temple Health surgeon-in-chief, Amy is a distinguished educational administrator with an exceptional record of service to the university, to the city and to the medical profession,” Temple provost Gregory Mandel said in an announcement to campus.

» READ MORE: ‘Where is the outrage ... from everyone?’ The story behind this Temple trauma surgeon’s tweet.

Goldberg had been serving as interim dean for 18 months, following the sudden death of former dean John Daly in March 2021.

Goldberg, 61, a native of Broomall, got her bachelor’s from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Her parents are both Temple alumni, and she worked her residency in general surgery at Temple University Hospital. She became a clinical instructor in surgery at Temple in 1991.

Since 1993, she has been a trauma surgeon at Temple, which has the distinction of treating more gunshot patients than any other hospital in the state.

“I think what I’ll do now in the dean role is be even more energized,” Goldberg said in an interview. “It’s not hanging over my head anymore. I know that the job is mine, and I can truly continue the vision that I laid out as the interim.”

Over the last 15 years, Goldberg and Scott Charles, Temple’s trauma outreach manager, have started programs to advocate for and assist victims, educate schoolchildren about gun violence, and train community members on how to provide first aid to gunshot victims.

Earlier this year, as the city’s gun violence continued to escalate, she tweeted: “Last night was an abomination in our city. Our community is dying. Where is the outrage ... from everyone?” It came after two were killed and 12 injured in three separate shootings — one of them near Temple’s campus — in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

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As dean, she has overseen the launch of diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, the restructuring of the medical education and student support offices, and changes in curriculum and technology, the school said. Goldberg said the school is focusing more on students’ well-being, providing career advising and assigning them coaches “so we can identify where they are stumbling before they fall,” she said. The school is also raising scholarship funds to provide students with more financial support, she said.

Temple, through a donor, in 2021 also began giving all 220 new medical students handheld ultrasounds, which they learn to use to detect problems in patients’ bodies as they conduct exams. Goldberg said Temple is among only a handful of medical schools in the nation that provide the devices to every student.

Also under her watch, the medical school earlier this year tapped five members of its North Philadelphia community to interview prospective students and help make decisions about who will be admitted. The goal was to make sure prospective students understood Temple’s values and had the capacity and empathy to appreciate and respect their future patients.

“It’s such a tremendous message to our community: We want to know what you think,” Goldberg said at the time.

Goldberg received the Great Teacher Award at Temple in 2018 and previously was awarded the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Temple president Jason Wingard called her “a keenly intelligent leader” who is “committed to cross-stakeholder engagement” and who “has excelled in each role she has held at Temple.”

Goldberg said she will continue to work as the on-call trauma surgeon at Temple hospital at least a couple of nights a month.

“That’s a huge part of me and my own personal mission,” she said.