While I never miss a check-up, I can’t say that I’ve ever been particularly passionate about dental health, it’s just a fact of life. I confess I hadn’t thought much about dentistry, or everything that goes into advancing the practice, until recently.
Performing cutting-edge research is a crucial aspect of health sciences education today—dentistry, too. But many venerable institutions are finding that their aging spaces, laboratories, and lecture halls, which ably served them for decades, are a poor fit for today’s pedagogies. But a simple update-and-replace approach may not fulfill all their needs, either, as these research institutions are not unlike higher ed, even corporate institutions, they need space for a range of human activity and connection to be successful.
The University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry enjoys a global reputation for applied dental education. The five-story building is home to both dental research and a large public clinic that serves more than 75,000 patients every year. This combination of research and hands-on learning within one building creates incredible opportunities for “bench-to-chair” innovation.