Joel May

230 Jacobs Creek Road • Titusville, NJ 08560
Voice: (609) 737-2001 • Fax: (815) 371-1188 • Email: joelmay@yahoo.com
     Joel was born in Allentown, PA and grew up in eastern Pennsylvania, mostly in the Coal Regions. He attended the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, PA and got his BS degree in Economics from Albright College in Reading, PA.
Joel's Picture

     After a few years of working in the Business Office of the Reading Hospital and a 2-year stint as an Army draftee (he was stationed at Fort Campbell, KY with the 101st Airborne Division but never did jump out of a plane), he got an MBA from the University of Chicago with a concentration in Health Care Administration and, not incidentally, married Helen Parr of Upper Montclair, NJ. They subsequently had two children, Doug and Kathy, and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2009.

     Following a short hitch as Administrative Resident at Indiana University Hospital, he returned to the University of Chicago first as an Instructor, then as an Assistant Professor, in the Graduate School of Business.

      One thing led to another and, in 1970, he became Director of the Graduate Program in Health Administration and, subsequently, Associate Director of the Center for Health Administration Studies. In addition to the teaching and administrative duties associated with managing the Graduate Program and the Center, he did research in the areas of Health Economics, Health Planning, and Productivity.
     In 1977, he left Chicago to become Executive Vice President and then President of the Health Research and Educational Trust of New Jersey (HRET-NJ) located in Princeton, NJ. He also joined the faculty of the Graduate Program in Public Health of the University of Medicine and Dentistry - Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, NJ. (Try to say that all in one breath!)

     Under his leadership, HRET-NJ undertook a number of major research activities. It also created one the first satellite-based health education television networks, The Health Information Network, an early effort in the field that has become known as "telemedicine" or, more generally, "distance learning".

     After leaving HRET-NJ in 1984, Joel formed and led The Pennington Group, a health care management consulting firm while remaining on the UMDNJ-RWJMS faculty. However, in 1995, following a heart attack, he retired from both activities. He now spends his time learning and teaching about computers at the Computer Learning Center at Ewing and 55PLUS of Princeton, NJ, as well as for various senior citizen groups around central New Jersey. He is a member of the Hopewell Valley Senior Advisory Board and Treasurer of the Hopewell Valley Senior Foundation. He spends part of his time cooking and reading for the blind and until recently, he sang with two local choral groups.