Summer 2009

 

This fall many of  you will probably notice my absence from the office on Monday mornings.  This is because I have taken a position as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Dental School.  The program that I will be teaching is Oral and Dental Anatomy on Monday and Wednesday mornings starting in September and ending in the middle of November.  This will be my second semester teaching at the "U" and I can tell you it has been quite an experience.

The Oral and Dental Anatomy course is designed for the incoming freshman dental students to get acquainted with proper dental anatomy.  This is important because later on in the students' careers it will be critical to replicate the proper anatomy when doing restoration in a patient's mouth.  Without proper anatomy, a filling could be too high and cause a toothache, not function efficiently when chewing or not look esthetic enough for ones smile.  The course also develops hand-eye coordination that is so critical in the field of dentistry.  The students are required to create realistic life sized teeth in wax by using every day dental instruments to carve wax away and add wax as needed.  The students are then graded by me and the other members of the faculty for accuracy and neatness.  Oral and Dental Anatomy is also the first class the students are introduced to dental terminology that you as patients have probably heard in our office such as buccal (near the cheek), lingual (near the tongue), occlusal (biting surface) and hundreds of more.

I technically started teaching at the University of Minnesota last spring, however that was for a much different course.  I love the hands on approach that dental school provides not only for the students, but the professors as well.  The courses are very interactive and showing a student proper technique on a plastic model or mannequin is much more enriching for their learning process compared to a lecture format.  The students are very engaging and are eager to learn and my colleagues are extremely helpful to not only the students but to a new professor like myself.  Teaching is vastly different than private practice.  I love the change of pace and the different challenges teaching brings and I never thought it could be so rewarding.