Nourishing Our Roots

True, we can readily recall the numerous challenges we all faced during that seemingly interminable creep toward graduation. Yet in spite of the hardships, it seems most dentists do look back fondly on their days in dental school. I believe that, although we rarely admit it, most of us rely daily on our dental school education as we treat patients. We may modify our individual techniques and favorite materials throughout our careers, but our formative education has etched something more indelible on our brains. For me, it was a standard of excellence and the motivation to endlessly pursue that standard that was instilled in me by teachers such as Richard Kahn and Terry Donovan. For that brief yet unforgettable glimpse at excellence, I will be forever grateful to them. I believe everyone who is so motivated has his or her own great teachers who have given similar inspiration.

This issue of the Journal of the California Dental Association is both a showcase for the California dental schools as well as a tribute to them. We are fortunate not only to have five dental schools in California, but also to have schools, administrators, and faculty that rival the best in the world. We owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who works to make our schools such benchmarks of excellence: from the deans, through the ranks of the faculty, and to a sometimes forgotten group -- the staff and employees who make the day-to-day running of the schools possible.

Recently, we have heard that there is a crisis looming in dental education. In fact, according to some, it is here. Schools report difficulty attracting enough faculty to meet the current and projected demand. In particular, there seems to be a lack of young, career-minded dental educators crucial to replenishing the faculty ranks as the more experienced teachers inch closer to retirement. There are two suspected reasons for this. First, new dentists are more in debt from their education than ever before; and second, salaries in private practice are higher than for starting dental school faculty positions. How then can we encourage young dentists to pursue careers in dental education?

For starters, I will go out on a limb and project that dental school salaries will never match those that can be earned by capable private practicing dentists. At the same time, I do not believe that dentists, on the whole, enter the profession for purely financial reasons. Surely there are other careers that offer a greater return on investment for the amount of time and expense dental education demands. Dentists tend to be giving. We have a large number of dentists who volunteer time to organized dentistry and other endeavors with little to no monetary compensation. Whether serving organized dentistry or dental education, there is some degree of sacrifice involved. But being a teacher can bring the rewards of shaping and inspiring future dentists and making a tangible difference in the quality of dentistry we are able to provide our patients. There is a value and a reward gained from teaching that a paycheck can never provide.

This is a message that everyone in dentistry can help promote whether inside or outside of the dental education system. It is also a message that young dentists and new graduates should heed as they consider career choices and how they would like to give back to a profession as rich with opportunity as ours. If we all work together to address our education crisis, we will continue to keep dental schools, the very roots of our profession, strong and ensure a bright future for dentistry.