Schendel serves as both chair of the department and chief of the division. Clinical services are provided at Stanford Hospital and Clinics as well as at Packard Children's Hospital. Some 25 percent of the division's approximately 2,000 annual surgeries are considered cosmetic procedures, the rest reconstructive. Reconstructive surgeries are often interdisciplinary with such services as hand, orthopedic and general surgery. The house staff program selects three residents per year from an applicant pool of about 135.
Graduates pursue a mix of reconstructive, cosmetic, academic and private practice options.
Schendel graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry in 1973 after a brief career as a graphic designer. He served a four-year residency in oral and maxillo facial surgery at Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, and studied cleft lip and palate surgery and dentofacial orthopedics for one year as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Nantes in France. He practiced oral and maxillofacial surgery in Honolulu for several years before attending the University of Hawaii School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1983. Schendel completed a general surgery internship at Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, and two years of general surgery training at Stanford. He finished the Stanford plastic surgery training program and then became a fellow in craniofacial surgery for a year with world-renowned Paul Tessier in Paris.