Dr. Venuti joined Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine in 2011 along with the first entering M1 class. In 2012, she was appointed Chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, the former name of the Department of Foundational Medical Studies. She oversaw the Embryology curriculum for the M1-M2 students, served as Co-director of the Reproductive Systems and Musculoskeletal System courses as well as assisted in anatomy and histology laboratories throughout the curriculum. She also served as Chair of the Curriculum Committee and the Faculty Awards Committee, and served on the Committee on Committees, the Promotion and Tenure Committee and the M1/M2 Curriculum Subcommittee.
Prior to joining OUWB, Dr. Venuti was an Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy at Louisiana State University’s Health Sciences Center in New Orleans and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York.
While at LSUHSC she was Faculty Advisor and Coordinator of the LSUHSC New Orleans Public Schools Science Partnership, which brought medical and biomedical graduate students into the classroom to help teach science. Her interest in community outreach led her to be selected as Co-chair of the Developmental Biology Program for the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in which she served for several years. She currently serves as Secretary and member of the Board of Directors for the Casa Colibri clinic in rural Guatemala.
Dr. Venuti is a Fellow of the American Association for Anatomists (AAA), she was elected a member of the AAA Board of Directors and served as AAA Annual Meeting Program Co-chair and on the AAA Executive Committee, AAA Educational Outreach Committee and on several other AAA committees and task forces. In 2019 she was awarded the A.J. Ladman Exemplary Service Award by the AAA. She was also elected to the Board of Directors of the Association of Anatomy, Cell Biology and Neuroscience Chairs (AACBNC) and has since been granted Emeritus status from both the AAA and AACBNC. She has been a member of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists, International Association of Medical Science Educators, Society for Developmental Biology (SDB), Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology and the Corporation of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole. While at LSUHSC she served a term as Program Officer in Developmental Systems at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Before joining OUWB, Dr. Venuti’s conducted biomedical research that focused on signaling pathways that pattern the early embryo and on molecular mechanisms of skeletal muscle development. This research was funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Association, March of Dimes, NSF, the MBL and other agencies. She received research fellowships from the MBL to conduct her research during the summers and also taught in the MBL summer Embryology course for several years and served on the MBL Education Committee.
Dr. Venuti has taught in the Anatomical Sciences for more than 30 years and has received several ‘Excellence in Teaching’ awards. Most recently she was awarded the Golden Apple Teaching Award by the OUWB SOM class of 2023. Her teaching experience has included: Clinical Anatomy, Human Prenatal Anatomy (Embryology), Developmental Biology, Cell and Molecular Biology and Allied Health Human Anatomy (as Course Director), Nursing Anatomy, and Embryology (MBL summer course). While at Columbia she was involved in the development of 3D reconstructions of the Visible Human and helped develop interactive tools for teaching human anatomy. She has extended her efforts to creating instructional tools in embryology and is currently in the process of completing a series of embryology animations. She has consulted for BabyCenter, Scholar RX, Thieme and the SDB Developmental Biology CoRe (Collaborative Resources for Learning Developmental Biology) as well as serving on several Editorial Boards.
Contact Information:Office: 461 O'Dowd Hall
Phone: 248-370-3642
Email: [email protected]
Embryology, human anatomy, cell and molecular biology
Education:Ph.D., Anatomical Sciences, State University of New York at Buffalo
B.S. and M.S., Biology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA
