Far Ahead of the Curve With Dean Lobb’s vision and a faculty willing to embrace change, Marquette leads the nation in curricular innovation
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r. Gary Stafford remembers how he and his colleagues became determined to shed some serious light on just what was going on at the Marquette School of Dentistry. They were attending an annual American Dental Education Association (ADEA) meeting of the Commission on Change and Innovation (see sidebar, page 5), listening to representatives from another dental school wax poetic about what they perceived as a pioneering curricular approach. “We were sitting there thinking, ‘Marquette’s been doing this for 12 or 13 years!’” says Stafford, who chairs the Dental School’s Department of General Dental Sciences. The approach – upgrading from a procedural-based curriculum to a more patient-centered, comprehensive care curriculum – was adopted by Marquette in 1999 for the entire student body. The presenting school at ADEA, by contrast, had just recently implemented it, and only for their fourth-year students. This wasn’t the first time Stafford had heard other schools discuss curricular initiatives that 4
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seemed “innovative to them, but kind of standard for model for MUSoD that the school began adoptus,” he says, adding that he’d had similar experiences ing in 1999. It embraced the comprehensive every year since 2007, when he began attending the care approach, early clinical experiences, integraCCI meetings. It had become crystal clear to him tion of content and instruction, community that Marquette and its dean, Dr. William Lobb, outreach, evidence-based decision making, and a were “far ahead of the curve.” rounds education model. It served as a blueprint Earlier in 2011, Stafford and his colleagues for the 2002 building, which was designed had also witnessed the presentation of the annual specifically to enable implementation of the William J. Geis Award for innovation in dental plan’s progressive elements. In keeping with the education. “We said, ‘The Dean has to get this. Jesuit values of the University as well as Lobb’s He’s done so much,’” Stafford says. personal commitment to community outreach Stafford and his CCI colleagues decided to education, the curriculum also emphasized comnominate Lobb for the 2012 Geis Award (see page munity service and care for underserved popula20). Having served in the School of Dentistry since tions. (This remains a curricular cornerstone: 1994, Lobb has been the driving force behind what Marquette School of Dentistry clinics serve Move Over, Stafford, in the nominating letter to the Geis Foun27,000 patients annually, and the school remains dation, described as Marquette’s “groundbreakingMenone of Wisconsin’s largest Medicaid providers.) Percentage in faculty continuand dynamic” approach to dental education. Lobbof andwomen the Marquette ally evaluate the curriculum to ensure that it the 1962 Dental Not done developing remains true School to the 1999 plan’s vision and at program. Inspired in part by the Institute of Medicine’s D.D.S. the forefront of dental education. This ongoing 1995 report calling for curricular change in dental audit also seeks out and accommodates new Percentage of women education nationally, Lobb devised a new curricular approaches that support student learning. Lobb in the 2011 Dental School D.D.S. program.