Michael DeRosa, PhD, PA-C

Department Chair

Dr. Michael De Rosa is Chair of the Physician Assistant Department at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, California. Born and raised in southern California, Dr. De Rosa attended Occidental College and UCLA earning a doctorate in Neuroscience as part of the first generation in his family to seek higher education. Dr. De Rosa joined the SMU PA faculty in 1999 and gave the first lecture in the first year of the program in the Human Gross Anatomy course he led. Later, Dr. De Rosa went back to school to earn his master’s degrees in public health and physician assistant and becoming the director of the PA program at SMU in 2008. Dr. De Rosa has led the SMU PA program’s effort to diversify the PA student body resulting in more than 25% students of color in 6 of the past 7 cohorts among other achievements. Dr. De Rosa is also the founding president of Hands for Global Health, a non-profit organization formed to promote medical service trips and to support the SMU service trip to the mountains of central Panama. Since 2009, Dr De Rosa has led teams of SMU students and faculty in all SMU disciplines twice per year where they have provided well over 10,000 patient encounters.