to how a patient identifies that they have a health issue, to how they engage with a health provider, to how they get themselves—both individually as well as a population—to a state of health, and maintain that health,” Dr. Cooper said. “This is so important because this is where many of our other allied health colleagues are going, and dentistry
The College of Dentistry contingent at the IGNITE kickoff included Dr. Budi Kusnoto, Interim Head, Orthodontics; Dr. Manal Ibrahim, member of the College’s Alumni Board; Dr. Terry Sellke, longtime Orthodontics faculty member; Dean Clark Stanford; and Dr. Dale Nickelsen, longtime Pediatric Dentistry faculty member.
needs to take a leadership position.” In addition, Dr. Cooper said, the College is also particularly strong in regenerative medicine, and among the College’s IGNITE goals are obtaining funding for a Center for Regenerative Medicine and an Endowed Chair for its Director. “Endowing faculty positions to retain and recruit the brightest and the best faculty will allow the College to build on the excellence of its research enterprise and donors who fund research projects will be our partners in incredible discovery over the next five years,” added Valentino. “Private support in this critical space also will give our students increased research opportunities at the undergraduate and graduate levels.” Fund faculty excellence: We will secure endowed chairs and professorships to attract and retain the faculty expertise and bandwidth necessary to carry out the strategic goals we outline. “Recruiting and retaining the very best faculty is one of the biggest challenges—there’s a lot of competition out there,” Dean Stanford said. “We have to make sure that when we recruit, that potential faculty member knows he or she is coming to a place of excellence. “One measure of excellence is having endowed faculty positions, which provide additional resources to allow the faculty member to do great things, like trying innovative educational approaches, innovative science, and innovation in terms of addressing social equity issues,” he added. Invest in infrastructure: We will continue to make December 2017
strides in updating our infrastructure, technology, and learning environments to create a comfortable, contemporary, and welcoming environment for our students, staff, and the populations we serve. “Students not only want the best in terms of faculty, but they want the best in technology,” Dr. Stanford explained. “They want to know that when they will have the best education they possibly can. That takes the creation of leading-edge facilities, so facilities are going to be an ongoing part of this.” The College’s specialty departments also have compiled a list of fundraising priorities for the IGNITE campaign. Dr. Stanford also noted that one of the features of the campaign “is to embrace and expand on our ability to intellectually visualize for the students their role in that process of improving equity of health—the role that they play in improving health for both the individual patient and the health of the community.” He looks at the College’s future legacy as “to continuously create opportunities. To never shut doors because of cost, resources, difficulty, and challenges of a complex profession. We want to continuously create those opportunities to let everyone have a chance. “Along with faculty, staff play an invaluable role in the education of our students,” Dean Stanford said. “The people who run this place day-to-day are the staff. Those are the people who also need to be supported, rewarded, and embraced with an invitation to be part of what is a high quality education and research enterprise as we
Word of Mouth
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