E. Dorinda Shelley, MD, was first inspired and encouraged to become a dermatologist by her mentor and medical school professor, the late Philip C. Anderson, MD, at the University of Missouri. Further supported later during her career, she also was mentored by her husband, the late, renowned dermatologist Walter B. Shelley, MD, PhD. Since 1997, she has been a clinical professor of dermatology at The University of Toledo in Ohio. During her own highly successful career in dermatology, which she has always found extremely interesting and challenging for the past five decades, “like working with puzzles every day,” Dr. Shelley has also been a prolific author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of a long string of informative and authoritative books on her specialty, and of other unrelated works such as art retrospectives, memoirs, and children’s books, in addition to contributing to more than 200 articles and professional journals. Often working on something new, she is excited about her 2023 release, her latest children’s book titled “Max and the Bouncy House.”
Honored in all her spheres throughout the years, Dr. Shelley has received the Walter B. Shelley, MD, Leadership Award from the Women’s Dermatologic Society, been named an honorary member of the American Academy of Dermatology, and won the Rose Hirschler Award from the Women’s Dermatologic Society. A multiple Marquis Who’s Who honoree for the past five years, she has received the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award and the Humanitarian Award along with being included in the Top Professional and Professional Women publications. As for her own publications, more of Dr. Shelley’s titles, released in previous years, include “Bernadine Stetzel’s Our Town”; “Earl W. North, American Landscape Painter”; “Toronto and Ted”; “Dasher and the Sleigh-Train”; “Helium Heels”; “A Community of Scholars: Recollections of the Early Years of the Medical College of Ohio”; “The Helium Table”; “The Helium Egg”; “Consultations in Dermatology”; “Shelley’s 77 Skins”; “Advanced Dermatologic Therapy II”; and others.
A respected mainstay in her professions with memberships in key, career-related organizations, Dr. Shelley has held a steady stream of vital positions leading to her current roles. She was a professor and chief of dermatology with the College of Medicine and Life Science at The University of Toledo, a professor and chair at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, an associate professor and an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, an assistant professor of dermatology at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and a consultant for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Rockville, Maryland. A career highlight, she cited, is when she and her husband produced a professional and personal diary titled, “Portrait of a Practice.” The diary documented happenings in their dermatology practice, their lives, and their children’s lives – and they submitted a portion of the diary to the medical journal Cutis, which published the Shelleys’ content from 1990 to 1995. Sharing her career challenges, Dr. Shelley recalled when she began medical school as a woman being treated like a second-class citizen and being paid far less than her male colleagues, which she endured for decades before witnessing more parity on all levels.
Having prepared herself well educationally, Dr. Shelley received her certification from the American Academy of Dermatology in 1971, was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University between 1970 and 1971, completed her three-year dermatology residency at the University of Missouri in 1970, and was an intern at Saint Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri from 1966 to 1967. She earned her Doctor of Medicine in 1966 from the University of Missouri and a Bachelor of Arts from Mount Holyoke College in 1962. Even with all her hard work and accomplishments since her beginnings, Dr. Shelley continues to set new goals for herself and has ideas for another book. Moreover, her book “Helium Heels” is being combined with another work, and the outcome will be titled “Helium Tales” to be released in English and in French by a Canadian publisher.
Ultimately, Dr. Shelley wants to be known for always treating people with kindness and as equals. She advises emerging doctors to always listen to their patients, a practice that benefited her own professional growth. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to her beloved parents Robert G. Loeffel and Ellen (Shattuck) Loeffel, MD, Dr. Shelley’s proudest legacy is being the mother of Thomas R. Shelley, Katharine D. Shelley, and William L. Shelley; and grandmother to Zoe, Maddox Walter, and Andre. Among her many interests, she likes gardening, bakeries, library book sales, antique auctions, art galleries and collecting, and owning and directing bookshops. Notably, Dr. Shelley has a small farm that she calls a “farmette” that has donkeys, alpacas, horses, and sheep.