Dean's Message to Alumni

I hope that all of you have had a very happy and healthy holiday season and that the New Year brings you more of the same.

In my October message, I delineated a number of goals for the coming year that now are beginning to be addressed. For example:

• The School’s Development and Advancement team will continue working diligently to obtain support for endowed professorships that will attract and retain outstanding teachers and clinicians, who will ensure the education and training of excellent clinicians.
• The partnership with the Department of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine is fostering an interdisciplinary clinical facility in association with the Autism Center and with Kosair Charities.
• The research portfolio will be enriched by evolving relationships with the Speed School of Engineering.
• Recruitment of academic-clinicians with national and/or international prominence.
• Our relationship with the Home of the Innocents will be strengthened to provide additional experiences for our dental students and pediatric dental residents.
• The interprofessional education and patient care initiative with the School of Nursing’s Nurse Practitioner Program will be expanded and similar cooperative efforts with the Schools of Medicine, Public Health and Social Work will be identified and instituted.

I would like you to know that we are very pleased with the young professionals we are developing in the School of Dentistry. As I have noted previously, we continue to strive to ensure that our students will be clinically competent critical thinkers who positively epitomize our profession. I truly believe that the young Dentists and Dental Hygienists who will be graduating from ULSD will be the quality of professionals you will be happy to embrace as fellow alumni.

Sincerely,

John J. Sauk, DDS, MS
Dean