Thomas W. Bonagura, PhD is the Dean of the School of Science at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. As Dean for the last six years, he has overseen the academic plans and direction of the programs in the School of Science. Prior to becoming Dean, he was a professor in the Biomedical Sciences program teaching classes focused on human health across several programs, Biomedical Sciences, Biology, and Rehabilitation Health Sciences. His primary teaching areas were in physiology and molecular biology.

In addition, Dr. Bonagura oversees the Honors Institute as the Dean of the program. Prior to oversight, he was the Director of the program for many years. As Director, he handled the classes and immediate operations of the program. The core program includes teaching three classes focused on a research project and ends in a formal capstone presentation. It is organized as a completely different pedagogy, all flipped and inter-disciplinary seminar style classes, from the pre-professionally focused science program. 

Prior to arriving at BVU, Dr. Bonagura was engaged in RO1 research. He arrived from a post-doctoral fellowship and eventual faculty position at the University of Maryland School of Medicine where he studied the effects of estrogen on placental angiogenesis, intrauterine growth and early fetal development in a baboon model. Earlier, at Johns Hopkins University, he completed his doctoral work in Reproductive Biology where he characterized the functional interaction of transcriptional coactivators with naturally occurring mutant androgen receptors isolated from patients with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.