Entrepreneurial training to promote careers in academic dentistry.

Filling dental faculty positions isn’t getting any easier. A recent article in the Journal of Dental Education reports that the number of vacant budgeted full-time faculty positions remained almost unchanged from 2001 to 2003 at 280.1 According to that article, retaining dental faculty isn’t getting any easier either. The report notes that of the 921 faculty departures in 2002 to 2003, 46% involved entering private practice. The article called for “foresight” and “planning” to deal with this problem.1 The continued shortfall implies that graduates of US dental schools are not choosing careers in academic dentistry. In response to this crisis, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) introduced a number of programs to encourage dental students to enter academic careers. One is a debt forgiveness program, and another is a grant program to support new initiatives in curriculum development. My colleagues and I at the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine recently submitted a proposal for one of these innovative curriculum grants. In designing the proposal, we were guided by findings from our pilot program Workshop Course to Promote Dental Technology and observing the already overcrowded dental school curriculum. This latter observation implied that our proposal should focus on one curriculum change and that this change should be introduced as an elective. The workshop at the university in November 2003 consisted of lectures involving the conversion of a laboratory idea into a chairside product. Table 1 lists the workshop faculty members, their affiliations, and the titles of their talks. The efficacy of the workshop was evaluated using a preworkshop survey of participants’ expectations and a postworkshop survey to evaluate the level of comprehension of lecture content. The results of survey evaluation suggested that participants, including dental students, recognized the importance of the entrepreneurial sciences for the successful transfer of laboratory ideas to chairside and for career choices. A manuscript describing the workshop program and these results was submitted to the Journal of Dental Education for publication.2 Based on the findings from the workshop survey and on the recommendations of an NIDCR report, according to which competency in entrepreneurship, technology transfer, and management would be advantageous in training the next generation of dental scientists,3 a curriculum module was developed that incorporated the lectures presented in the workshop and listed in Table 1. In addition, the module included an entrepreneurial seminar series and an externship program. Mindful of the difficulties in introducing additional courses to the existing dental school curriculum, “elective” time was identified and