Big Ten Dental Deans Meet at RSDM

Deans of the Big Ten dental schools visit RSDM.

The Big Ten is known for its football teams, and although fans don’t fill bleachers for root canals, it has dental schools, too.

Last month, RSDM Dean Cecile A. Feldman hosted a meeting of Big Ten dental school deans to talk about the challenges and potential of belonging to the kind of academic community that’s typical of the Big Ten.

“We’re all very alike in terms of being large, public research universities,’’ said Feldman. “It was a great opportunity to share ideas and information and think of how we can work together in the future.’’

RSDM became the newest dental school of the group after the University of  Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) integrated with Rutgers in 2013. A year later, Rutgers joined the Big Ten – which these days includes 14 public universities and has a total of 9 dental schools, Rutgers included. Three Big Ten members have no dental schools: Penn State, the University of Wisconsin, Northwestern University and Purdue.

The eight deans who visited were from Indiana University, the University of Maryland, University of Iowa, Ohio State, University of Michigan, University  of Nebraska and the University of Illinois.

The deans stressed the advantages of belonging to the Big Ten, saying their schools were fertile ground for exciting collaborations,  as long as staff and faculty made an effort to reach out to others in more unfamiliar fields. “It’s important to work across disciplines and departments,’’ said Dr. Janet Guthmiller, dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Dentistry. “We shouldn’t exist in a bubble.’’

Because most Big Ten schools are flagship research universities and belong to the Committee on Institutional Cooperation – the academic arm of the Big Ten athletic conference – they agreed that excelling at research, and garnering funds, was key. In total,  Big Ten researchers receive annual funding of more than $9 billion. “A university exists for two reasons: To educate the next generation and find new knowledge,’’ said Dr. Clark Stanford, Dean of the University of Illinois College of Dentistry.

Dr. Leon Assael, Dean of the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, said that adopting a university-wide sense of identity and displaying school spirit, was also important. “You have to make sure you’re a part of it all,’’ he said. Admittedly, that was easy  at his school, he explained. The university’s mascot is Goldy the Gopher, who has two buck teeth, which especially endear him to dental students.