Mary T. Pronovost, MD ’90, Surgical Director of the Temple Breast Center and Associate Professor of Surgery at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (Katz), has come full circle with her Temple-made career — from Temple medical student and resident to surgeon, educator, and leader, and back again.
Her journey in medicine began in the 1980s, when she worked as a nurse, primarily in intensive care units at Abington and Holy Redeemer hospitals. Although she initially started a master’s degree in nursing, she realized she wanted to pursue further training, especially after participating in a six-month medical mission in Kenya.
“I yearned to know more and to have more tools to take care of a variety of patient ailments,” she says. Becoming a physician and ultimately a surgeon offered exactly that.
Having grown up near Temple in the Philadelphia area, she was already familiar with the school’s strong reputation. Just as important, she was drawn to its openness to nontraditional students and its deep commitment to serving the community. After earning her MD, she completed her surgical residency at Temple University Hospital, which she finished in 1995.
Dr. Pronovost then completed a fellowship in breast surgical oncology at Boston University. After finishing her fellowship, she worked at a general surgery practice. In 2004, her focus shifted exclusively to breast surgery, and she became the Director of the Breast Program at Bridgeport Hospital in Connecticut. Dr. Pronovost later joined Yale University’s faculty and served as Medical Director of Smilow Cancer Hospital’s Bridgeport campus.
In 2020, three decades after initially arriving as a student, she returned to Temple to lead the breast program and teach at Katz. She has combined patient care with a deep commitment to teaching and mentorship, winning the residents’ teaching award and received the 2025 Honored Professor Award at last year’s Reunion & Alumni Weekend.
“That brings me a lot of pride and joy,” she says.
“It's a great way to see what progress and growth has happened to Temple and for residents to see what prior residents have accomplished,” she says. “It’s a big world out there, and there are lots of opportunities. I’ll enjoy coming back to interface with the alumni and the residents.”
On the personal side, “Temple Made” spans more than just her own experience. She met her husband, Paul Pronovost, MD, when he was completing his internal medicine residency at Temple, and she was doing her general surgery residency. He returned to Temple in 2020 as well, becoming Chief of Nephrology and an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at Katz. Their son, Henry, is also a 2023 Katz graduate.
“We always say Henry got us our jobs here,” Dr. Pronovost jokes. “He loved his education here and met his wife here, too. She got her PhD from Temple’s microbiology department. We're proud of them. He’s just finishing up his internal medicine residency at Hopkins and is going to start a cardiology fellowship there in July.”
Their other son, Samuel, serves in the U.S. Air Force and is considering applying to medical school, including Temple, in the future.
Looking back on Temple’s influence on her training and career, Dr. Pronovost says, “Temple Made” means tenacity, compassion, and curiosity.
“I think I received all those things from Temple,” she says. “And there’s also its soul — a soul that is driven by doing the right thing for our patients and for their well-being.”
Below, Dr. Pronovost discusses Temple’s impact on her career and how working with Temple’s patients, medical students, and residents has brought her fulfillment.
Q: How did your experiences as a Temple student and resident eventually lead to returning in 2020 as a Temple breast surgeon and educator?
Dr. Pronovost: As a student, I wanted the academic exposures that you get in a university setting, and the surgical residency was well regarded and had a reputation for excellent training, good mentors, and research opportunities. Temple also has a real commitment to the community it serves. That has grown over the last 45 years. That was one of the reasons I came back.
After I finished my training, marriage and children and life took me in another direction and I left Temple for almost 25 years. Then, I got to a point in my career where I had built a breast program in Connecticut, and I had done some leadership activities at Yale and I was ready to redirect my energies. The Temple opportunity enabled me to do that in an educational way and certainly in a service way to the North Philadelphia community.
Q: During your leadership with the breast program, you’ve focused on studying and addressing disparity of care in patient populations. Can you tell us more?
Dr. Pronovost: We became certified through the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers, which elevated the quality of care that we provide for our patients in North Philadelphia.
My engagement with the residents provided an opportunity to conduct quality analyses of our patterns of care and improve them. We looked at things like the time between different treatments for more advanced cancers and how to improve that, as well as making sure patients were seen at earlier stages for their breast cancer treatment.
Our patients face many barriers to care. We tried to figure out how we could meet their needs — to come to where they are, rather than them coming to us. We did outreach through educational programs and used our tremendous social work team. We also have a navigator who has held the hand of our patients from the time that they’re diagnosed to make sure they get to all the appointments they need in a timely fashion, because we know time matters for breast cancer care.
We also collaborate with our medical and radiation oncologists to see patients together on the same floor, which really facilitates better overall quality of care.
Q: What advice would you give medical students who are embarking on their own careers?
Dr. Pronovost: At a recent "Meet the professor" session, I told the third-year students deciding their next steps that we have to plan our lives, but a lot of life just happens. We need to step back and let life happen because, as much as we think we can manage and have a whole career laid out in front of us, sometimes that's not how things work. Be open to opportunity, even if you might not think that was the path you were supposed to take. There might be opportunities that present themselves, leading you down a different path. That’s okay. At the end of the day, when you look back on your career, you’ll see that everything sort of fell into place — and that was true for me. A lot of doors opened; I went through them, and they took me on journeys I perhaps didn't expect.
I later met with one of the third-year students, and she wrote me the most beautiful thank-you note. She wrote that she so appreciated that message and felt our paths crossed for a certain reason that day. It was a beautiful letter. These experiences are what make me so happy and fulfilled with my career and my choices. As I say to everybody when I talk about my retirement, it's been a great run and a great career. And that letter from her just meant the world to me.