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Dr. Michael Friedland
Dr. Michael L. Friedland
FAU vice president, medical programs / dean, Charles E. Schmidt College of Biomedical Science

Degrees: Bachelor’s, Brooklyn College, 1963; doctor of medicine, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, 1967; specialty: Hematology

Administrative and teaching posts: Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn; Brown University; Medical College of Pennsylvania; New York Medical College; SUNY Upstate Medical Center; University of Missouri Kansas City School of Medicine; Texas A&M University College of Medicine; West Virginia University

Interests: Cooking, the beach, travel. “I think that would be exaggerating to say I play golf. I play until I run out of balls. That happens frequently.”

Dr. Michael Friedland makes the case that Florida Atlantic University is poised to enter elite company. Only 100 or so other universities in America have a med school, and the school that’s emerging at FAU “is going to reshape the university,” says Friedland, the med school’s future dean. “A university that has a med school is different than a university that doesn’t.”

FAU's Schmidt College of Biomedical Science
FAU’s Schmidt College of Biomedical Science houses a regional campus of UM’s med school until 2011.
FAU currently runs a University of Miami med school on its Boca Raton campus but is ending that relationship to open its own school in 2011. The Legislature signed off on the state’s sixth public med school in April.

A Brooklyn, N.Y., native, Friedland, 67, has had a long career as an administrator, professor and regional med school campus dean. He arrived at FAU in 2004 and became dean in 2006 of FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Biomedical Science and regional dean of the UM school in Boca Raton.

The UM program paved FAU’s road: In arguing for state approval to start a school, FAU says it’s just converting an existing school and won’t cost the state any more than the annual $12.6 million it pays to fund the UM program in Boca. Scripps Florida in Jupiter helps. Scripps and FAU will offer a dual-degree, Ph.D.-M.D. track as well as research opportunities.

“If we went forward as an independent FAU school with no strong affiliations, we might not be as well noticed or well noted as we will be with our partnership with Scripps,” Friedland says.