Dr. E. Dorinda Shelley was inspired to become a dermatologist by her dermatology professor in medical school, Dr. Philip C. Anderson. She earned a medical degree from the University of Missouri in 1966, where she also completed a dermatology residency in 1970. After finishing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in 1971, she served as an assistant professor of dermatology there for three years. She then relocated to Chicago, where she was an assistant professor and associate professor of dermatology at the University of Illinois until 1978. From 1978 to 1983, she was full professor and chair of dermatology at the Peoria School of Medicine (now the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria). Dr. Shelley moved to the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo in 1983, where she served as professor and chief of dermatology until 1997. Since that time, she has been a clinical professor of dermatology at the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences (formerly the Medical College of Ohio).
In 1980, she married Dr. Walter B. Shelley, a prominent dermatologist who also became her mentor and co-author. She has contributed more than 200 articles to professional journals, including the medical journal Cutis, where she and her husband submitted nearly 30 typewritten pages monthly of their diary, “Portrait of a Practice,” published from 1990 to 1995. “Portrait of a Practice” chronicled the couple’s practice and home life with their three children and serves as a highlight of Dr. Shelley’s career. They also authored numerous medical texts, including “Advanced Dermatologic Therapy” in 1987 and 2001, “A Century of International Dermatological Congresses” and “Advanced Dermatologic Diagnosis” in 1992, “Shelley’s 77 Skins: A Refresher Course for Doctors, Nurses and Students” in 2002, and “Consultations in Dermatology” in 2006. She has also written several children’s books, the Helium series in 2010 and 2012 and “Dasher and the Sleigh-Train” in 2019, which is being made into a Warner Brothers movie in 2019. She also edited two art books, “Earl W. North, American Landscape Painter,” published in 2015 and 2017, and “Bernadine Stetzel’s Our Town,” published in 2015 and 2018.
Dr. Shelley was certified by the American Board of Dermatology in 1971. She is a member of the American Dermatological Association, the Noah Worchester Dermatological Society and the Ohio Dermatological Association, and is an honorary member of the American Academy of Dermatology. In 1980, she was the second president of The Women’s Dermatological Society and received their Rose Hirschler Award in 2007 and Walter B. Shelley, MD Leadership Award in 2012. Dr. Shelley has been featured in the 54th through the 58th editions of Who’s Who in America and the 22nd, 23rd and 25th editions of Who’s Who of American Women. She is the proud matriarch of three children, two stepchildren, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Dr. Shelley enjoys her small farm, gardening, library sales, antique auctions, collecting art books and running her business, Library House Books & Art LLC in Grand Rapids, Ohio.
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