Dental school vacant budgeted faculty positions, academic years 2005-06 and 2006-07.

The annual turnover of dental school faculty creates a varying number of vacant budgeted positions at any given time. The American Dental Education Association (ADEA) conducts an annual survey to determine the status and characteristics of these vacant faculty positions. In addition, ADEA conducts an annual survey of dental educators to maintain a database on the size and characteristics of dental school faculty, including data on the distribution of full-time, part-time, and volunteer faculty, reasons for faculty separations, and sources of new faculty. The number of vacant budgeted faculty positions within U.S. dental schools increased throughout the 1990s, with a peak of 358 positions in 2000. Following this peak, the number of vacancies declined, falling to 275 in 2004-05. Since that time, there has been a rapid increase in the number of estimated vacancies, reaching 417 in 2005-06, then falling slightly to 406 in 2006-07. The 2005-06 and 2006-07 faculty vacancies surveys explore these increases, along with information relevant to trends in the faculty workforce, factors influencing faculty vacancies, and the impact of vacant positions on dental schools.

U.S. dental school applicants and enrollees, 2005 entering class.

There were 10,731 applicants to the entering dental school class in 2005. This represents a 13.8 percent increase over the number of applicants to the 2004 entering class and almost a 45 percent increase over the number of applicants in 2001. Dental schools reported 4,558 first-time, first-year enrollees in 2005, an increase of 101 first-time, first-year enrollees over the number reported in 2004. The percent of applicants that were enrolled in 2005 was 42.5. The percent of applicants enrolled in 2001 was 57.6. Women were 44.2 percent of the applicants and 43.8 percent of the first-time, first-year enrollees in 2005, slight increases from what they were in 2004. Underrepresented minorities comprised 12.8 percent of the applicants and 12.6 percent of the first-time, first-year enrollees in 2005. These percentages are little changed from those reported in 2001. The average GPA of the first-time, first-year enrollees increased slightly in 2005, from 3.4 to 3.5; there was little change in DAT scores, standing at 18.9 for Academic Average, 17.4 for Perceptual Ability, and 18.4 for Total Science.

The dental education environment.

The second in a series of perspectives from the ADEA Commission on Change and Innovation in Dental Education (CCI), this article presents the CCI's view of the dental education environment necessary for effective change. The article states that the CCI's purpose is related to leading and building consensus in the dental community to foster a continuous process of innovative change in the education of general dentists. Principles proposed by CCI to shape the dental education environment are described; these are critical thinking, lifelong learning, humanistic environment, scientific discovery and integration of knowledge, evidence-based oral health care, assessment, faculty development, and the health care team. The article also describes influences external to the academic dental institutions that are important for change and argues that meaningful and long-lasting change must be systemic in nature. The CCI is ADEA's primary means to engage all stakeholders for the purpose of educating lifelong learners to provide evidence-based care to meet the needs of society.

The case for change in dental education.

This article introduces a series of white papers developed by the ADEA Commission on Change and Innovation (CCI) to explore the case for change in dental education. This preamble to the series argues that there is a compelling need for rethinking the approach to dental education in the United States. Three issues facing dental education are explored: 1) the challenging financial environment of higher education, making dental schools very expensive and tuition-intensive for universities to operate and producing high debt levels for students that limit access to education and restrict career choices; 2) the profession's apparent loss of vision for taking care of the oral health needs of all components of society and the resultant potential for marginalization of dentistry as a specialized health care service available only to the affluent; and 3) the nature of dental school education itself, which has been described as convoluted, expensive, and often deeply dissatisfying to its students.

Educational strategies associated with development of problem-solving, critical thinking, and self-directed learning.

This article was developed for the Commission on Change and Innovation in Dental Education (CCI), established by the American Dental Education Association. CCI was created because numerous organizations within organized dentistry and the educational community have initiated studies or proposed modifications to the process of dental education, often working to achieve positive and desirable goals but without coordination or communication. The fundamental mission of CCI is to serve as a focal meeting place where dental educators and administrators, representatives from organized dentistry, the dental licensure community, the Commission on Dental Accreditation, the ADA Council on Dental Education and Licensure, and the Joint Commission on National Dental Examinations can meet and coordinate efforts to improve dental education and the nation's oral health. One of the objectives of the CCI is to provide guidance to dental schools related to curriculum design. In pursuit of that objective, this article summarizes the evidence related to this question: What are educational best practices for helping dental students acquire the capacity to function as an entry-level general dentist or to be a better candidate to begin advanced studies? Three issues are addressed, with special emphasis on the third: 1) What constitutes expertise, and when does an individual become an expert? 2) What are the differences between novice and expert thinking? and 3) What educational best practices can help our students acquire mental capacities associated with expert function, including critical thinking and self-directed learning? The purpose of this review is to provide a benchmark that faculty and academic planners can use to assess the degree to which their curricula include learning experiences associated with development of problem-solving, critical thinking, self-directed learning, and other cognitive skills necessary for dental school graduates to ultimately become expert performers as they develop professionally in the years after graduation.

Dental school vacant budgeted faculty positions: academic year 2004-05.

The number of vacant budgeted faculty positions in dental schools has continued to decline, dropping from 296 in 2003-04 to 275 in 2004-05. The number of lost positions declined to twenty-five, from 147 lost positions reported in 2003-04. While the average number of vacancies per dental school was just under five, three-quarters of these vacancies were considered usual and normal to the operation of the dental school. Based on ADEA's annual survey of dental educators, there was approximately a 9 percent faculty turnover between 2003-04 and 2004-05, and according to the 2003-04 and 2004-05 surveys of vacant faculty positions, it is taking longer to fill vacant positions. The greatest challenges influencing the ability of a school to fill a vacancy were salary/budget limitations and lack of response to a position announcement. Still, between 2003-04 and 2004-05, the number of dental school faculty increased from 11,348 to 11,715, including 4,736 full-time, 5,097 part-time, and 1,791 volunteer faculty members. Employment status was not reported for ninety-one individuals. Private practice remains the primary reason for faculty separations and the source of new faculty. In addition, nearly one in four new faculty members entered dental education directly following graduation from a dental or postdoctoral education program. While it may take longer to fill positions and it has become more difficult to fill some vacancies, overall, dental school deans indicated that the number of vacancies was not affecting the quality of dental education. However, between anticipated faculty retirements and current levels of faculty turnover, continued support for and development of faculty recruitment and retention programs remains essential to maintaining a quality dental education workforce.

Survey of dental student financial assistance, 2003-04.

The Survey of Dental Student Financial Assistance reports data collected by the American Dental Education Association on financial assistance to dental students in the academic year 2003-04. Over 90 percent of students at the fifty-one responding dental schools received financial assistance in the form of loans, grants, scholarships and/or work-study programs, with students receiving an average of 43,191 dollars per year. As tuition and fees rose 21.4 percent over the past two years, financial assistance rose 23.1 percent. Both continue to increase at a rate greater than inflation. The primary source of financial assistance was in the form of loans, accounting for nearly 90 percent of the reported financial assistance. Most of the remaining assistance was in the form of obligated or unobligated grants and scholarships, with an increasing share attributable to grants/scholarships with obligations following graduation. As the price of higher education increases, reliance on financial assistance continues to increase, and students graduate with an increasing amount of debt in real and constant dollars.

Dental school vacant budgeted faculty positions: academic year 2003-04.

The total number of vacant budgeted positions (296) fell by eleven positions between 2002-03 and 2003-04. However, the reported number of lost positions increased from thirty-nine to 147. The average number of vacancies per school was 5.3. The average number of vacancies reported to be usual and normal at any one time was 3.6 per school, the same as last year. Forty-three percent of the vacancies had been vacant less than seven months, a decline from 55 percent in 2002-03, indicating an increase in the number of positions vacant longer than six months. Meeting position requirements was the most frequently reported factor cited as influencing the ability to fill a position. This is a change from recent previous years when the most influencing factors were salary/budget limitations and lack of response to position announcements. While there was no indication expressed in the survey that vacancies were adversely affecting the quality of dental education, almost 50 percent of the deans reported faculty recruitment and retention was a problem at their school, and over 55 percent indicated that they anticipated it would become more difficult over the next five years to fill vacated positions. Faculty recruitment, development, and retention remain priority issues in meeting the teaching, research, patient care, and administrative needs of the dental education community.

Incorporating bioterrorism training into dental education: report of ADA-ADEA terrorism and mass casualty curriculum development workshop.

Numerous areas have been identified in which the dental profession may be called upon to assist in the event of a major terrorism attack. In order to successfully fulfill these roles, dentists and dental students must be adequately prepared. Dental schools play a vital role in this preparation. Participants in an ADA-ADEA workshop reached consensus that all dental students should be trained in a core set of competencies enabling them to respond to a significant bioterrorism attack, help contain the spread of the attack, and participate in surveillance activities as appropriate upon direction of proper authorities. Further emergency response training should be available to individuals interested in gaining additional knowledge and skills to assist in response to an attack. Participants also concluded that, where possible, training should be seamlessly implemented into the current curriculum without the addition of new courses; however, the group also recognized the possible need for alternative models at some dental schools. Challenges to implementing bioterrorism training into the dental school curriculum include regional variation, management of the basic science curriculum, and financial considerations. The development of an exportable training package will be considered and funding sources explored in moving forward with the development of a curriculum.

A profile of dental school deans, 2002.

Dental school deans were surveyed to update and expand the profile of a dean developed in a 1999 survey and to assess whether the profile has changed since the initial survey. The demographic characteristics and qualifications of dental school deans were similar in 1999 and 2002. The dean turnover rate and average length of deanship have not significantly changed since 1990. There was a shift in the current and emerging issues described by deans in the 1999 and 2002 surveys. In 2002, infrastructure and resource management, future workforce needs, and access to care were much more likely to be mentioned. Nearly all deans have a dental degree and additional advanced degrees or certificates, and they are likely to be specialists. Dental school deans are almost always full professors with tenure and have had significant administrative experience as department chairs and assistant/associate deans and have served on boards outside of their institution. Deans typically are scholars with multiple published journal articles, textbooks, or chapters and have been the principal investigator for grants and contracts. This information provides insight into the background necessary to become a dental school dean and the qualities sought by dental schools.