A Look into the Future of the University of Michigan School of Dentistry

Imagine a dental school where dentists, physicians, nurses and pharmacists are educated together and work as a team delivering the highest quality, most cost efficient patient care. Imagine again an educational environment where dentists, physicians, nurses and pharmacists work together shoulder to shoulder not only learning their craft but also understanding more fully what each profession brings to the table and learning how best to capitalize on each others' strengths. Lastly imagine someone advising legislators in Washington or Lansing on the creation of intricate and complex health care policy and this advisor being a dentist with the sophisticated knowledge and skills training in health care policy and health care law.

This is precisely what the University of Michigan Dental School will look like in the future. We will be a school where educational and patient care programs are fully integrated with the other health sciences. It will be a school that thrives on interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary collaboration and enables its students to explore the boundaries of the profession.

The impetus behind this vision of the future was our strategic assessment. Approximately two years ago, the Dental School was challenged to provide guidance to the Provost and President on how to build the strongest possible dental school to foster excellence and develop future paths for the School.

The vision that evolved during this process is one in which the Dental School plays a central role in developing the next generation of oral health care professionals who are a product of a truly interdisciplinary health science education program. They will deliver care that focuses more on early intervention, employing sophisticated diagnostics and therapies. We will prepare the next generation of leaders who formulate and influence oral health care policy at the regional and national levels and we will find our graduates leading teams of health care providers in developing new strategies to improve oral health for local, regional and global communities. Fundamentally, we will create opportunities where non existed before and challenge existing paradigms to redefine our future.

My vision for the school of the future is multidimensional. We will develop innovative collaborative approaches to interdisciplinary education spanning disciplines within and across the health sciences. We will explore educational collaborations with non-traditional disciplines to create entirely new opportunities for professional development and leadership. We will build upon our strengths in diversity. We will employ state-of-the-art technologies to enhance the highest-quality, patient-centered care. We will develop future leaders in oral health care delivery, research and education, and become world leaders in scientific discovery and its translation into optimal oral health.

These challenges are certainly daunting, but ones we can achieve. If we are to remain among "the leaders and the best" we must transform in a manner that will support the School in exploring new academic opportunities in order to provide academic leaders in dentistry and the other health sciences and enable our graduates to deliver the highest quality, patient-centered oral health care. Our strategic assessment outlined a clear and unequivocal mandate for change and our teams of internal and external reviewers endorsed this framework.

We are now engaged in implementing this vision. Our faculty, staff, and students are actively involved. We invite you, our alumni and friends, to join us with your thoughts and input as we develop strategies and an action plan to make this vision a reality. You will be hearing more from me in the months ahead about how you can get involved.

Sincerely,

Peter J. Polverini, Dean