Charles N. Bertolami, DDS, DMedSc
New York University College of Dentistry
Dean’s Message
The founding of the New York University College of Dentistry (NYUCD) in 1865 marked the first successful attempt to establish a dental school in New York State. Today, NYUCD is widely recognized as an innovator in clinical education, patient care, research and community services designed to better serve our students, our patients and the surrounding community.
NYUCD’s ability to innovate is possible because of a unique set of assets:
- Size—NYUCD is the largest dental school in the United States and the most comprehensive oral healthcare center in the world. NYUCD is also part of a great research university and is a key player in NYU’s research.
- Extraordinary global reach—NYUCD boasts a level of national and international diversity unmatched by other dental schools.
- Location—New York City allows us to leverage the media and industry in ways that other dental schools cannot do.
Students are our greatest asset. Students central to our identity and are what make us a university and not simply a clinical service center or a research institute. Giving students top priority means three things:
- We will help them achieve technical excellence in dentistry and are committed to providing the time, energy, and resources to bring them a first-rate clinical education.
- Our graduates identify themselves people of science; as sophisticated consumers of research. Not every graduate has to become a scientist but a learned profession does require that every graduate become an intelligent user of research.
- We help students acquire emotional intelligence, by role modeling it for them, because we recognize that the way students are treated is central to how they will treat others, especially their patients.
When you couple this approach to students with a very progressive curriculum, state-of-the art facilities, access to the largest, most culturally diverse pool of patients in the nation and a superb research program, you have all the ingredients for a special learning environment.
Charles N. Bertolami, DDS, DMedSc
Introduction
NYU College of Dentistry (NYUCD) is the largest comprehensive oral health care center in the world. Each year the College trains over 1,600 students, approximately 50 percent of whom are women and minorities, from all over the U.S. and nearly 50 countries. They include predoctoral and postdoctoral dental students, dental hygiene students and nursing students. The College offers MS and PhD programs along with continuing education courses for graduate dentists.
NYUCD endeavors to improve the health of the populations in New York City and around the world by providing approximately 300,000 visits annually to the most multiethnic, multicultural patient population in the nation. The College conducts a mobile dental care program, Smiling Faces, Going Places, which travels to medically-underserved areas throughout New York; operates the only dental school-based clinical research center in the U.S. providing beds for 24-hour patient monitoring; is a national center for consumer information, education, and research into the causes and prevention of oral cancer; and conducts media-driven consumer education campaigns under the banner of “Ask Your Dentist”; and offers access to a global network of dental colleges.
Research priorities include the PEARL Network, a regional research network of linked dental practices, supported by a $26.7 million grant from the NIDCR; epidemiology and health promotion activities in the areas of oral cancer and infectious diseases, improved dental implants, biomimetics and tissue engineering, and catastrophe preparedness.
As a result of these programs and activities, NYUCD is well on its way to becoming the dental institution in the world with the greatest impact on the health of society.
Highlights
According to National Institute for Dental Research figures for 2005, NYUCD ranked 6th in the nation in terms of federal research support. A number of factors account for NYUCD’s rapid rise in the national research rankings. NYUCD has thoroughly integrated research into the fabric of the College; recruited an Associate Dean for Research; recruited world-class senior research faculty; built the Bluestone Center for Clinical Research and new laboratories; created an environment that encourages interactions and collaborations among research faculty and their colleagues in Medicine, Nursing and Arts and Science at NYU, and at other research universities; and fostered mentoring relationships between senior and junior research faculty.
On April 15, 2006, the NYU Chapter of the Student National Dental Association led New York City’s first annual Oral Cancer Walk to raise awareness of a disease that kills over 7,000 American men and women annually. Free oral cancer screenings were available at sites along the walk route. The walk took place in Harlem to call attention to the fact that oral cancer disproportionately affects African-American men, who have the highest rates of oral cancer in the United States. Cosponsoring groups include: The Oral Cancer Foundation, the Oral Cancer Consortium of New York and New Jersey, NYU College of Dentistry, ABC 7 and the Yul Brynner Head and Neck Cancer Foundation.
In 2005, NYUCD became the first U.S. dental school to use a completely non-dissection anatomy curriculum. The curriculum uses plastinated specimens exclusively as an educational model. This approach to teaching dental anatomy combines layered dissection with slices from the head and neck. Students using these pre-dissected, plastinated specimens avoid the time-consuming process of peeling back tissue layer by layer into sections to learn where the important structures are. Because students are able to work from the inside out they can view every structure simultaneously in three dimensions.
History
New York University College of Dentistry was founded in 1865 as the New York College of Dentistry and is the third oldest dental school in the United States. The school was the first successful attempt to establish a dental school in New York State. Throughout its history, NYUCD has continued to be a school of “firsts.” Examples include pioneering the use of the X-ray, establishing the first formal departments of endodontics, pediatric dentistry, and implant dentistry, and the first family practice program at a U.S. dental school, the first Oral Cancer Consortium in the U.S., the first completely digitalized dental school curriculum, the first dental school to mandate terrorism preparedness training for dental students, and the first to form an alliance with a College of Nursing in order to expand access to general health care for needy populations.
The College officially merged with New York University in 1925, which led to the promotion of research and postdoctoral education. Today NYUCD is recognized as a leading source for dental care in New York City and a leader in research and national policy issues in dentistry.
In 2005, the NYU Division of Nursing joined NYUCD to become the College of Nursing within the NYU College of Dentistry.
