A father of twin sons, an avid golfer and biker and a recipient of several teaching awards, Daniel Scheirer joined the ranks of Trinity College's associate deans in July, succeeding Kay Singer as the primary advisor for pre-medical students.

Scheirer, a former associate professor of biology and at Northeastern University, became the associate dean and director of the Office of Health Professions Advising. He said he hopes to revamp the center during his tenure.

The role of the OHPA is to help students navigate the process of medical-school admissions, which Scheirer said can be "quite daunting and complex without a plan and procedure in place."

"We are enabling students to achieve their goal of medical school and provide the services needed for them to do so," he said. "From an outsider's perspective, pre-med advising at Duke has a great reputation. I'm here simply to complement and extend what is already a high-level, excellent program."

Junior Bilal Lateef, president of Duke's American Medical Student Association Premedical Chapter, said he feels the focus of the pre-health advising office this year is to make itself an integral part of students' pre-med experience.

Scheirer said he also plans to hold more workshops to inform students how to interview for medical schools, write the personal essay and apply through the American Medical College Application Service, a Web-based application used by almost all medical schools.

In addition to more presentations, Scheirer is redesigning the OHPA Web site and developing software with the Office of Information Technology to help the pre-advising team and students communicate more easily.

Scheirer added that he is also advocating a more team-like approach and will coordinate all future OHPA activities on campus so that uniform information is given out.

"[A good pre-health advising team] must become proficient in the intricacies of the pre-med process and all the permutations possible to go into medicine," he said. "We should learn from more experienced colleagues, which is why we're hoping to have our advisors go to meetings and workshops so that they can learn how to answer more difficult questions."

Scheirer, a member of the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions, is also trying to get all of the advisors to join the NAAHP.

"We take our role very seriously and want to have even more professional advisors," he said.

Robert Thompson, dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, said Scheirer's interest in teaching, advising and working with undergraduates on research was what made him an attractive candidate for the position.

Scheirer not only taught biology at Northeastern, but also served as the university's chief pre-medical advisor and the chair of their Pre-med Advisory Committee. At Duke, he will also serve as the academic dean for chemistry and physics majors.

In the future, Scheirer said he will also teach undergraduates and added that he hopes to teach an introductory biology course.

"I always had a great interest in medicine and taught biology at Northeastern from a medical approach," Scheirer said. "I worked with lots of pre-meds so the logical extension was to go into pre-med advising."