Office of Research Training and Career Development
OBJECTIVE
The goal of this initiative is to encourage more dental students to pursue academic research careers, as a way of addressing the need for dental school faculty while, at the same time, ensuring a viable dental research workforce. Specifically, the purpose of this initiative is to seek applications from dental schools to develop DDS/MS programs to recruit and train dentists who will pursue academic research careers.
BACKGROUND
According to the American Dental Education Association, there were 250 vacant full-time dental school faculty positions in the 2004-5 academic year. Of these, 51 (20 percent) were in research, basic science or behavioral science. At the same time, there is a shortage of new dentists who are entering careers in academic research. Over the years, a myriad of workshops, expert panels, and symposia have been conducted, and leaders in education and research have discussed the need for revising the dental school curricula to incorporate more science and research, both to produce more dentist-scientists and to produce clinical dentists who understand the scientific foundations of clinical practice.
The National Advisory Dental and Craniofacial Research Council (NADCRC) discussed this issue, and a Council subcommittee identified the twin challenges of stimulating academic dental biomedical and behavioral research while changing the culture of dental education to value research in admissions and training. The subcommittee noted that while many dental students have an interest in conducting research, such an interest may work against them in the admissions process. For those that do get accepted, research interest may get superseded by a full clinically-based curriculum.
Following these discussions, the Council subcommittee recommended the development of a program to promote research training and enhance the academic curricula for a subset of dental students. The recommendation was endorsed by the full NADCRC. The proposed scholars program would be awarded to dental schools and would require at least 20 percent of the students in each class to be engaged in research at least 20 percent of their time in dental school. By extending the time in dental school to five years, “scholar students” would earn a Masters degree in addition to the DDS or DMD degree. This Masters degree program must be rigorous and integrated into the school and/or academic health center as a whole - the program must be designed to prepare trainees to engage in biomedical or behavioral research activities. Masters degrees awarded for clinical specialty training would not be allowable components of this program.
Members of the subcommittee further clarified and publicized their recommendation through a Guest Editorial in the Journal of Dental Research. They noted that such a program would not only benefit the students’ immediate education, but it would also have the effect of producing more dentist scientists who would choose careers in academic research and reduce the number of dental school faculty vacancies. It is also envisioned that in the longer term, such a program would help to improve the research infrastructure at dental schools, as well as expand the oral health research base and NIH funding levels at dental schools.
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM WORKSHOPS
As mentioned above, many workshops, symposia and other meetings have issued reports recommending programs designed to strengthen the interaction between research and dental education. These reports include "Dental Education at the Crossroads - Challenges and Change" (Institute of Medicine, 1995), "Oral Health in America: A Report of the Surgeon General" (Department of Health and Human Services, 2000) and the "Future of Dentistry" (American Dental Association, 2001).