Welcome to your future! Or, at least, to what four experts think will be in store for dental academics in the coming years.

In May 2017, Columbia University invited four thought leaders to lead a training program for dental academics and aspiring academics. With support from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (Faculty Development Training Grant D86HP24475) and the Dunning Memorial Symposium fund, the College of Dental Medicine hosted this event in honoring the school’s Centennial – celebrating 100 years by looking forward toward the future of dentistry. Each speaker shared their vision for the future of faculty training with special concern for new science and evolving delivery systems.
This website devotes a page to each topic where you can read the experts’ bios, watch their interviews, link to their presentations, and learn how they answered the question, “What do you think about the future?”
This program will prepare primary care dental faculty to teach in an era of new science and evolving delivery systems. It will address the need for ever-greater scientific and public health literacy so that trainees are well-prepared for:

• ever-changing healthcare environments;
• discuss chronic disease management approaches that complement surgical dental care;
• explore how the scientific “omics revolution” will inform “personalized” oral health care;
• and describe oral health care financing, delivery, and workforce changes underway in the US.