Faculty Focus: Shital Mani, OD ‘03, FAAO

Over the past 20 years, Shital Mani, OD ‘03, FAAO, has made a name for herself at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry (PCO) at Salus University, rising from the ranks to become director of off-campus residency programs.

Even if that name is oftentimes difficult to pronounce.

“I’ve struggled all my life with that. It took me 30 years of trying to have people pronounce it properly,” said Dr. Mani, whose first name phonetically is “Shee-thal.” "I was working in a laser center and one of the technicians said, ‘If you can say lethal, you can say Shee-thal.’ I thought that was brilliant. So now when I introduce myself to somebody, I say ‘it’s like lethal’ and they get it.”

Raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, Dr. Mani and her family emigrated to the United States from India when she was 11 years old. They settled in northern New Jersey with other family members, but her maternal grandfather passed away around the time that Dr. Mani was deciding on colleges to attend. She eventually settled on Rutgers University to be closer to home, but it became the best initial professional and personal decision of her life.

Not only is that where she met her husband, Ram Mani, but also where she became interested in vision within the healthcare profession. The Laboratory of Vision Research was looking for a student to help post-doc students with research projects, specifically working with children and how they develop their stereo vision. Dr. Mani would go with a post-doc student to local preschools and kindergarten classes and test the children using random dot stereograms, a way to determine if kids have three-dimensional depth perception.

Random dot stereograms, a technique developed in 1919, was extensively studied by Bela Julesz, who at the time was a neuroscientist working at the vision research lab at Rutgers. Dr. Mani had the opportunity to eventually do a lot of research on the subject alongside Dr. Julesz and that piqued her interest in early age vision development.

“I wanted to definitely do something in vision but I just couldn’t envision myself in a laboratory setting. I just really loved the fact that ODs (Doctors of Optometry) could be the primary care physicians for the eyes. That’s what led me to optometry.”

And, that in turn, led her to PCO. Before the application process, she visited the Elkins Park, Pennsylvania campus, met admissions staff and fell in love.

“The day that I came to interview, Kelly Malloy, OD ‘96, Resident ‘97, FAAO, was the one who interviewed me and she had just finished her residency and come on as a faculty member. I think I was her first interviewee,” said Dr. Mani. “It wasn’t just the fact that the campus was beautiful, but more importantly, the people were just so warm and welcoming. It just felt like home. The decision for me to come to PCO was very easy.”

During her time at PCO, she was mentored by Felix Barker, OD, MS, FAAO, then the dean of research at PCO and now professor emeritus.

“He was impactful and a really great mentor in encouraging me to think outside the box,” said Dr. Mani. “Felix laid a foundation in me that clinical research is important. So, when you see patients, you’re not just going through the A through Z of how to do the exam but you’re thinking critically and you’re applying the knowledge that you’re learning in a classroom and lab setting to when you actually see patients.”

After graduating from PCO, Dr. Mani and her husband moved to Boston for his residency in neurology at what was then Tufts-New England Medical Center. While there, Dr. Mani joined the optometry faculty at the New England College of Optometry. Four years later, the couple moved to the greater Philadelphia area and Dr. Mani joined the PCO faculty.

While at PCO/Salus, Dr. Mani cites former president Thomas Lewis, OD ‘70, PhD, FAAO, and vice president emeritus Anthony Di Stefano, OD ‘73, MEd, MPH, FAAO — both of whom she worked with while serving as class president when she was a student — as influential in her career, and the now-retired Linda Casser, OD, FAAO, FNAP, professor emerita, the first female dean of PCO/Salus, who Dr. Mani calls “a tremendous mentor.”

In her current role since 2011, Dr. Mani oversees the accreditation processes for existing off-campus residency programs as well as oversight of all new programs and affiliated sites. Prior to that, she was both on-and off-campus residency director from 2009-2011.

During that time, Dr. Mani has mentored more than 500 on-and off-campus residents, participated in more than 25 Accreditation Council on Optometric Education (ACOE) site visits, started nine new optometry resident program affiliations while supporting eight existing programs helping PCO/Salus achieve the status of having one of the largest optometry residency classes nationwide.

“It brings me sheer joy when I see OD residents who we have trained at our various training sites become leaders in optometry,” she said. “It’s a proud ‘Mama Mani’ (a nickname she received from the residency class of 2009-2010) moment.”

One of Dr. Mani’s passion projects for the past three years has been to work with several optometry deans, residency directors and faculty members on a national level to increase the mentorship provided to OD residents categorized in the underrepresented minority groups to encourage them to pursue a career in academia.

She currently chairs an Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry (ASCO) subcommittee called the Faculty Diversification Initiative alongside three other non-PCO/Salus OD faculty members. With the mentorship work that group has done, 30 percent of the mentored residents in the underrepresented minority category have joined the workforce as an optometrist in an academic setting, which Dr. Mani calls “one of the most rewarding parts of my career to date.”

When she’s not directing off-campus residents, Dr. Mani is a gardener, describes herself as “a voracious reader” and loves to travel. She and her husband have two daughters, Sarina, 12, and Sonia, 9, both of whom, Dr. Mani notes, have easy names to pronounce.

“When my husband and I first found out I was pregnant, that was one of the first conversations we had. There is something to be said about having traditional names, and I value that. Deep down I am Indian. But having gone through what I went through, I wasn’t going to give my kids difficult names.”

Dr. Mani tells her students there’s not one day she has regretted her decision to be an optometrist, but more importantly to attend and now be on the faculty at PCO/Salus.

“In hindsight, it really makes me appreciate all of the faculty and everybody who was there and really working toward the goal of graduating us and allowing us to be the best we could be in the profession,” she said.