Greetings from the School

Message from School Chair, Dr. Paul Major

05 March 2020

The Class of 2023 is the first cohort of students to experience the new “curriculum for learners” as part of the Curriculum Renewal (CR) project at the school. After years involving rigorous reviews, planning, design and development, the first year of the newly-designed DDS program has been implemented.

The new curriculum improves the learning of dental students through changes such as enhanced active learning strategies and sequencing material in a way that supports and strengthens the learning between foundational dental and medical content to everyday practice. Rather than teaching dental disciplines in isolated courses, faculty are working to integrate course topics together. This will strengthen the capacity of students to provide comprehensive patient care and critically reflect and think about their work as they become dental professionals.

The overall goals of the new curriculum are much grander though. Our aim is not only to transform the future of learning at the School of Dentistry by improving the student experience but also to better prepare students for the demands and challenges of entering practice. This involves much more than ensuring students have solid didactic knowledge and clinical competence. Developing enlightened leaders who, as dental and dental hygiene professionals, make a unique and highly-valued contribution to the community is at the forefront.

Over the past few years, we have been able to recruit highly-skilled faculty and staff members, equip our dental clinics with new and updated equipment, and enhance the quality of our programs in order to provide our students top value for their educational investment. We have been very fortunate.

While the transition to our new curriculum has been relatively smooth, we are now faced with some tight budgetary constraints.

Our focus moving forward will be how to adapt to our changing provincial funding landscape. The decisions we make now and in the future will be necessary for us to sustain the quality of our programs and protect our core mission of student education, patient care and scholarly work. One of the advantages that we have at the school is our potential to generate revenue, which will enable us to create a sustainable budget model to preserve and enhance our core mission and reputation for excellence in teaching, research, and community outreach.