Joanne Pieringer, PhD | Beloved PCOM Teacher & Mentor | PCOM 125 Years
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Joanne Pieringer, PhD 
125 Years Through 125 Stories

As told by Ruth Thornton, PhD, Professor Emerita

”When I started teaching at PCOM, I listened to tapes that students had made of JoAnne’s lectures. It was so easy to follow her. JoAnne was a very good teacher. … She always had a smile. I remember giving one lecture when I had just started teaching. Those lecture rooms are huge, holding about 270 people. And there she was in the audience, near the front. At one point when I looked up, she had the best smile on her face. It was such a wonderful thing to see. … JoAnne was probably about five foot four or five, with short, straight hair and looked like she would be no-nonsense. And in some cases she was; she was a strong woman. But really, she was just fun. She never got frustrated with me, with students, with anybody. Students loved her! … When JoAnne met Barbara [now Dr. Thornton’s spouse] and me, we were a couple. We remember going to events and how welcoming she was of both of us. She was always interested in people. … JoAnne’s field was lipids—so was her husband’s [Ronald Pieringer, PhD, was Dr. Thornton’s professor when she was a doctoral student at Temple University]—and that’s not my favorite subject. So she and I complemented each other intellectually. … JoAnne had her own research. But when Dr. Mochan [Eugene Mochan, PhD, DO ’77, then department chair] was there, he had a particular research project in molecular biology he wanted the department to do. JoAnne was able to shift gears on this ongoing project. She was a kind of gung-ho type of person: ‘I’m just going to jump in here, and I’m going to do it. And I’m going to enjoy it.’… I became the chair of the department after Dr. Mochan stepped down. I found that a lot of my ideas about how to approach students and how to manage people had come from JoAnne. We only overlapped for perhaps two years before she passed away, and I didn’t realize at the time how much I was getting from her. There was no expectation of her being my mentor; it just happened. …When she died, Dr. Mochan, Dr. Ruth Borghaei and I set up a scholarship fund in JoAnne’s name, along with a brick laid in the Donor Garden outside Evans Hall.”

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Digest, the magazine for alumni and friends of Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, is published by the Office of Marketing and Communications. The magazine reports on osteopathic and other professional trends of interest to alumni of the College’s Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) and graduate programs at PCOM, PCOM Georgia and PCOM South Georgia.