Monthly Communication - February 2008 Edition

February gave us a number of reasons to celebrate. We are making significant progress in so many areas, just a few of which are included in this edition of the Monthly Communication. Thanks to everyone -- our faculty, staff, students and alumni – who have contributed to our collective success.

-Martha

CAMPUS COMMUNITY

UW Provost Phyllis Wise meets annually with each Dean to discuss major goals for the upcoming year and challenges facing the achievements of these goals. During this meeting Provost Wise praised the School for the previous year’s accomplishments, including securing state funds for the Regional Initiatives in Dental Education (RIDE) program. Our conversation focused largely on the School’s goals for 2008-2009, with an emphasis on the need to upgrade our facilities to retain our status as a top tier institution. In addition, I expressed the School’s commitment to ensuring RIDE has a successful inaugural year and to establishing an educational comprehensive care model for our clinics. All units face similar issues around infrastructure. Our success is predicated on the need to work collectively on long-term planning for those needs. Importantly, Provost Wise also commended us for securing additional funding for the Washington Dental Service Building for Early Childhood Oral Health (ECOH) and all other efforts that helped make 2007 a success.

DENTAL COMMUNITY CONTACTS

The monthly meeting of the WSDA Board of Directors was held on February 8. It provided an opportunity for me to update the Board about our School’s educational programs, community outreach initiatives, research activities and overall direction. It also afforded us a chance to speak candidly about our goals and challenges in the year ahead. During the visit I presented Steve Hardymon, Executive Director of the WSDA, with a plaque recognizing the Association’s contributions to our School, which he graciously accepted on behalf of the Association.

Dr. Joerg Strate, Global Director Professional Relations for Philips Oral Healthcare, visited the School and met with Dr. Tim DeRouen, Executive Associate Dean of Research and Academic Affairs, and Dr. Thomas Beikler, Department of Periodontics, and me to discuss the potential for joint projects. For now, Philips agreed to continue to provide funding for travel scholarships to foreign participants in the UW's Summer Institute in Clinical Dental Research Methods. The Summer Institute enjoys a sixteen year-long history of success in providing courses on a variety of topics ranging from behavioral research in dentistry, biostatistics, clinical epidemiology/study design, case studies in data analysis, randomized clinical trials and a seminar on the grant review process.

This February I had the opportunity to travel to Bethesda, Maryland on two occasions to serve on study sections for the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Center for Research Resources’ Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program and for the National Institute of Dental Craniofacial Research (T-32 training grants). Many of our faculty serve on study sections for NIH. This is an important service we provide to the research community, and is also a way for us to keep current both on research directions and on the review process.

FACULTY

Beginning in January, Dr. Douglass Jackson, Associate Dean of Educational Partnerships and Diversity, began serving in his capacity as Co-Director of the American Dental Education Association's (ADEA) program entitled "Bridging the Gap: To Increase the Racial Diversity of the Dental Workforce". The program aims to develop a seven-year curriculum designed to increase the number of underrepresented minority students who receive dental education and subsequently enter the workforce as dental school graduates. The program was made possible thanks to a $550,457 grant from The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. Their gift will fund the program’s planning process to implement pipeline programs focused on preparing a new cadre of underrepresented minority students for the practice of dentistry.

STUDENTS

On February 4 we were pleased to host a first-of-a-kind State of the School address for students. More than forty faculty, staff and members of the student body attended. The timing of this presentation was intended to address their concerns and provide the audience with an opportunity to meet Dr. John Wataha, the new Chair of the Department of Restorative Dentistry.

The Associate Deans and I meet with class presidents and council representatives each month. In February our conversation focused largely on ethics and professionalism. As a result of that conversation, and other meetings with faculty and staff in recent months, we determined that the creation of an Ethics and Professionalism Task Force was in order. The Task Force will be led by Dr. John Evans, Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, and Chair of the Curriculum Committee; and, Dr. Wendy Mouradian, Associate Dean of Regional Affairs and RIDE Program Director. Representatives from our faculty, staff and student body, faculty from the School of Medicine, and interested and experienced dentists from the private sector have also been invited to participate. The group will be charged with reviewing the educational mission of the School and making recommendations to improve the professionalism and ethical teaching in the dental curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and to strengthen our commitment to maintaining a strong professional culture in the School as a whole.

AWARD AND HONORS

Dr. Peter Milgrom, Department of Dental Public Health Sciences, attended the International Conference on Novel Anticaries and Remineralizing Agents in January in Vina del Mar, Chile. Dr. Milgrom was one of only seventeen invited speakers to present the paper he co-authored with fellow School of Dentistry members Dr. Kiet Ly and Marilynn Rothen, RDH titled “Xylitol: How Does It Work And Is There A Dose Response?” Their paper will be part of a special issue of Advances in Dental Research, published by the International Association for Dental Research (IADR) later this year. The conference was organized by faculty from the dental schools of the University of California San Francisco, New York University, Academic Center for Dentistry (ACTA), Amsterdam, and the University of Chile, and has followed up the School’s conference on Biotech and Biomaterials Research to Reduce the Caries Epidemic, hosted by the Northwest / Alaska Center for Research on Oral Health Disparities in June 2005.

The Department of Periodontics was well represented at an American Academy of Periodontology workshop on “Inflammation and Periodontal Diseases: A Reappraisal,” which was held in Boston in January. Invited participants included Dean Martha Somerman, Drs. Roy Page, Paul Robertson and Doug Dixon, a UW alumnus now serving at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. The event brought together about seventy-five selected experts in fundamental aspects of inflammation for a broad range of diseases to take a new look at the interrelationship of inflammation and periodontal diseases. Proceedings from the Workshop will be published this summer and will be explored further at the 2008 American Dental Association annual meeting.

Dr. Nestor Cohenca, Department of Endodontics, was appointed to the editorial board of the Dental Traumatology Journal, a first for our school. The Journal was established in 1985 and is an important one to the specialty of Endodontics as well as Pediatric Dentistry and Oral Surgery because it covers most of the literature related to dental and oro-facial trauma. It is also the only Journal that publishes current therapeutic guidelines for the treatment of traumatic injuries. In this new role, Dr. Cohenca will review scientific papers and set policies on behalf of the Journal. With this appointment, Dr. Cohenca will also be actively involved within the International Association of Dental Traumatology (IADT) executive committee.

Drs. Eric Law and Jeffrey Hockett , graduate students in the Department of Endodontics, received one of the top ten Table Clinic awards during the Annual Session of the American Association of Endodontists in Philadelphia late last year. Their presentation was entitled "Glass Ionomer Cement Barrier Over the Top of Root Canal Filling Materials in Canals to be Restored with Posts". The competition is open to all residents and graduate students from Advanced Endodontic Programs in the United States. All of the University of Washington graduate students presented at the Annual Session. This marked the fourth year in a row in which the University of Washington graduate students in Endodontics have won an award in either Table Clinic or Research Poster competition.

Elizabeth (Jihyun) Kim (‘10) was chosen as one of only twelve recipients of this year’s American Dental Education Association (ADEA) /Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Products Preventive Dentistry Scholarship. These scholarships are awarded to pre-doctoral dental students who “have demonstrated academic excellence in preventive dentistry.” Each scholarship recipient will have $2,500 applied to tuition and fees for pre-doctoral dental study. Liz is the third student in our School’s history to receive this award. Congratulations, Liz!

CONTINUING DENTAL EDUCATION (CDE)

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Philip Worthington, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, has been selected as the Seventh Washington Dental Service Foundation Distinguished Professor in Dentistry. Our Advisory Committee decided on implants as the topic for the next symposium, which will occur in 2010. In this capacity, Dr. Worthington’s primary responsibility will be to plan and implement the symposium, and to edit and publish the resulting proceedings. The triennial symposium was established in 1989 with generous support from Washington Dental Service Foundation and continues to make a significant impact in dental education - drawing researchers, academicians and a community of practicing dentists together to share information and findings on state-of-the-art issues facing dentistry.

 

A complete list of School of Dentistry events and archived editions of the Dean's Monthly Communications are also available online.

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