For C. Joseph Anderson, MD, a career in medicine is something to be grateful for. For the patients who trusted him. For the colleagues and mentors who shaped him. And for the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he trained, taught, and built the foundation for a life’s work.
Dr. Anderson’s ophthalmology career spanned more than 50 years—defined by innovation and a deep, enduring connection to the patients and community he served.
Dr Anderson is a native of the northern Wisconsin town of Merrill. He was awarded a scholarship to the University of Notre Dame where he obtained his bachelor’s degree. Dr. Anderson completed medical school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW) where he graduated with honors (Alpha Omega Alpha). He then secured a coveted internship at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, TX—a high-volume trauma center that exposed him to a level of acute care far beyond anything he had seen in Madison.
“Patients were very, very sick. I was on call every third night,” he recalled. “It was an experience I couldn’t get anywhere else back then.”
When the internship ended, so did his certainty about what came next.
Every career has a turning point. And for Dr. Anderson, it came down to two envelopes.
One offered a prestigious internal medicine residency at Parkland. The other contained an acceptance letter from the University of Wisconsin: a spot in the ophthalmology residency program he had applied to back in medical school, almost on a whim.
“I had a tough decision to make. It was keeping me up at night,” he recalls.
The answer, it turned out, came from a U.W. classmate and fellow intern, Dr. Ted Branson—and in an instant, that changed the course of his life.
“Ted looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Joe—if you don’t go into ophthalmology, you’re absolutely crazy.’ And just like that—I realized he was right.”
Dr. Anderson completed his ophthalmology residency at U.W. in 1977, followed by fellowship training in corneal and inflammatory eye diseases at Indiana University School of Medicine. He then returned to Madison and joined Davis Duehr, which later became part of Dean Clinic.
He would go on to spend decades at the forefront of a rapidly evolving field.
“When I started, cataract surgery involved large incisions and long needles,” he said. “By the time I finished, we were using tiny incisions and often just eye drops for anesthesia.”
Over the course of his career, Dr. Anderson helped drive those advances. He played a key role in advancing small-incision cataract surgery and pioneering the use of topical anesthetics. He was also among the first ophthalmologists in Wisconsin to perform intraocular lens implantation using multifocal lenses and an early adopter of LASIK technology.
In parallel, Anderson dedicated 30 years to teaching as an Associate Clinical Professor in the UW Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, mentoring generations of residents and young physicians.
His biggest piece of advice to new providers is simple: “You’ve made a good decision,” he said. “Continue to take great care of your patients. Stay on the cutting edge of what you believe is best for them. Be innovative and willing to change for the better.”
Dr. Anderson left Davis Duehr Dean in 1999 to partner with Dr. Michael B. Shapiro to found Anderson & Shapiro Eye Care. Together, they remained on the forefront of the field. In 2009, his daughter Nicole stepped in to continue his work—an evolution that feels less like an ending and more like a continuation. Dr. Anderson fully retired from the field in 2019.
“My daughter still brings home messages from some of my former patients,” he said. “The fact that they reach out after all this time tells me I did something worthwhile. It’s a part of why I’m so grateful to the University of Wisconsin—Madison.”
Dr. Anderson has much to be proud of. But one thing stands out above the rest.
“Without a doubt, the best thing I ever did was marry my wife,” he said. “I credit a lot of my success to having her beside me the whole time. I couldn’t have done any of it without her.”
He met his wife, Carole, during college—he was at Notre Dame, and she was pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing—and later a Master of Science in Education—at the UW. Their partnership, he says, has been the foundation for everything that followed.
Now, together, the Andersons are focused on giving back to the institutions that have shaped their lives. Their support of UW—Madison includes funding a student-athlete scholarship and supporting a named professorship in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences.
“We’ve been very fortunate,” he said. “It’s important to show gratitude for the people and places that shape your path—including the University of Wisconsin—Madison, which did so much for me and my family.”