The medical school is pleased to welcome three new faculty members to it departments of Psychiatry, Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine and Family and Community Medicine.
Geetha Dhatreecharan, MBBS, started at the medical school August 1 as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry.
Prior to joining WMed, Dr. Dhatreecharan worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at University of Cincinnati for two years. Dr. Dhatreecharan has spent 14 years as a psychiatrist at several Southwest Michigan clinics, and served as a psychiatrist and medical director of Community Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services in Three Rivers for seven years. She also worked as a psychiatrist at Ascension Medical Group Delano Clinic for 10 years.
Dr. Dhatreecharan is a graduate of T.V.S. Lakshmi Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Madurai, India. She earned her medical degree from Madurai Medical College in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. She completed her residency in psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in 1999. She went on to complete a fellowship in geriatric psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati.
Dr. Dhatreecharan will serve as an adult inpatient psychiatrist for WMed Health, the clinical practice of the medical school.
Meanwhile, Steven Proper, DO, PhD, joined the medical school’s Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine August 1 as an assistant professor for Pediatric Allergy and Immunology.
Prior to joining WMed, Dr. Proper completed an advanced fellowship in advanced allergy and immunology research at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Proper is a graduate of Kettering University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental chemistry in 2005. He went on to complete the DO-PhD program at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2015, earning his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology. Following his completion of the DO-PhD program, Dr. Proper completed a residency in pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He followed that with a clinical fellowship in allergy and immunology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in 2020.
Dr. Proper's primary clinical interests include allergy and immunology, especially asthma care, oral immunotherapy for food allergy, atopic dermatitis (eczema), hereditary angioedema and immune deficiency.
In the medical school’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, Holly Schmidt, MD, has joined the residency program in Battle Creek as an assistant professor.
Dr. Schmidt has worked as a family medicine physician in San Diego for two years at Fleet Surgical Team Three. She also has worked as a staff family medicine physician at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan.
Dr. Schmidt is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in art in 2010. She earned her medical degree from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 2015 and followed that with a residency in family medicine at United States Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida.