Honorary Student Marshal
Professor Emeritus, Department of Medicine 
School of Medicine

Gary D. Plotnick, MD, graduated from the School of Medicine (SOM) in 1966, spent four years as a medical resident there (including a year as chief resident), two years as a cardiology fellow at Johns Hopkins Hospital before joining the SOM faculty in 1974.

Plotnick’s major interest involves medical education at all levels throughout the medical school. Graduating medical school classes have awarded him the Golden Apple Faculty Teaching Award 11 times and the Student Council Award for teaching nine times. In addition, he is the only faculty member at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) to receive both Clinical and Pre-Clinical Golden Apple Awards.

He also received the Founders Day Teacher of the Year Award from UMB in 2001 and the Theodore E. Woodward Award for Excellence in Teaching from the American College of Physicians. Plotnick was elected to the Gold Humanism Honor Society by the University of Maryland medical students.

He has held multiple positions within the School of Medicine and the Department of Medicine. He was director of cardiology education for the Division of Cardiology until his retirement in January 2017 and for years ran the Cardiology Clinical Conferences, Cardiology Grand Rounds, and the Echocardiography Conferences. He has served as assistant dean of student affairs, co-director of the Sophomore Pathophysiology and Therapeutics course, director of the Echocardiography Laboratory, director of the Cardiology Fellowship, member of the Institutional Review Board and co-councilor of University of Maryland Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society.

He was recently named president of the University of Maryland Medical Alumni Association.

Classes he taught included Functional Systems and Biochemistry (freshman year), Introduction to Clinical Medicine and Pathophysiology and Therapeutics (sophomore year). In the junior year he oversaw weekly echocardiogram readings and ran the cardiology elective for senior students.

Plotnick’s clinical expertise has led to service in several capacities in the American Society of Echocardiography, including the Board of Directors, numerous other committees, and as speaker and sessions chair at the national meeting.

Plotnick’s research is in the area of echocardiography, particularly using ultrasound to evaluate the response of blood vessels to various stimuli. International interest on the effect of diet on heart disease risk grew out of an article he authored with Drs. Robert Vogel and Mary Corretti in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on the effect of anti-oxidant vitamins and high fat intake (a McDonalds meal) on brachial artery vasoactivity.

He is author or co-author of 90 peer-reviewed articles and the co-author of two books on echocardiography and one on unstable angina. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and the American Journal of Noninvasive Cardiology. He has been a reviewer for multiple journals including the American Journal of Physiology, Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of American Society of Echocardiography, and JAMA.

In retirement, Plotnick continues to oversee SOM’s Cardiology Clinical Conference, attends Medicine Grand Rounds, and teaches echocardiograms to junior students on their Medicine rotation. He also gives conferences for nurses on echocardiography and to faculty as part of Faculty Development.