Message from the Dean

This is a time of great anticipation for UMKC and for the School of Dentistry. In June we welcomed a new chancellor, Dr. C. Mauli Agrawal. There is much excitement about what his leadership holds for the future of UMKC. With a background in engineering, he hails from the University of Texas at San Antonio where he served as interim Provost. You can read about the new chancellor’s background and thoughts about joining us in this issue of the Explorer.

We continue on a journey, a pathway, to focus our efforts for a great future at the School of Dentistry. Last fall, we had a successful accreditation site visit and as we move forward, we have initiated a re-envisioning of our strategic plan. With the many external pressures on higher education and dental education, we look forward to a laser-sharp focus on our essential work, on ever improving the work we do and developing opportunities that advance our efforts in educating students, creating new knowledge essential for the advancement of our professions and in serving our community. Our faculty and staff have been working on the possibilities for our future!

Supporting our ongoing journey are the strong outcomes our program continues to achieve. Our faculty are remarkable! Leaders in our profession, they facilitate those outstanding outcomes our School continues to achieve. Our students continue their successes in both national boards and in the results of the clinical licensure examinations. These national and regional measures represent opportunities for us to know how well we are achieving our goals compared to other programs and how well our students are prepared. This last year, we made significant gains in how our students performed on national boards. Congratulations to our students who achieved high marks on tests that were more difficult to pass. Our students’ performance on the clinical licensure examination is among the best in the nation! That is something to celebrate! Through a strong tradition of how we accomplish our clinical training, our faculty take great pride in how well we prepare students for the practice of dentistry and dental hygiene. I continue to hear from external stakeholders about how well UMKC prepares students for their careers in the dental profession.

As we anticipate the future, we continue our partnership on Hospital Hill with our Health Sciences Schools and institutions. Each of the essential institutions has joined together in what we call the Health Sciences District with the goal to advance us all. Working together, we hope to create better health outcomes for the community and achieve new goals for collaboration in training, research and service. I know we will achieve great things via this new initiative. This initiative couldn’t be more timely as we compete for limited resources, advance collaboration and envision the future of the health of our communities. This work will help us all envision and create the future through collaboration!

We have much to celebrate on the pathway to our student, faculty, staff and alumni success! Thank you for your ongoing support of our journey to achieving and accomplishing our goals.

With gratitude,
Marsha Pyle, DDS, MEd
Dean, UMKC School of Dentistry