The Reporter: June 1997, Vol.8, No.3
SDOS Enters Ivy League Consortium

Columbia's School of Dental and Oral Surgery formed an Ivy League consortium that has set out to promote life-long learning for dental professionals. Dr. Allan J. Formicola, dean of SDOS, announced that Columbia entered into an agreement with the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard to create the Ivy Dental Consortium with the initial goal to make continuing education texts and other learning materials available over the Internet to dental graduates.

Although this is not SDOS's first continuing education program, it is the first time the school has offered courses on the Internet for graduate dentists. "This seems to be the future of dental education," says Dr. John Zimmerman, assistant dean for information resources and associate professor of clinical dentistry. "We are training current students to use this technology when they get out of dental school." Obviously, some continuing education must be hands-on, admits Dr. Zimmerman, but using the Internet as a learning tool has its own value. "It's not just turning pages in a book, however, because the program requires users do actual research, information seeking, and case studies."

Columbia, Penn, and Harvard are the only Ivy League universities with dental schools. "Combining the resources of these three outstanding dental schools for dental continuing education makes incredibly good sense," says Dr. Formicola. "The programs we can develop together will be much stronger than what any of the schools could do individually. We have tremendous in-house educational and computer expertise and I'm excited about the possibilities for creating what could be a revolution in dental education."

Dr. Zimmerman is the project coordinator for technical planning of the program. Dr. Martin Davis, SDOS assistant dean for student affairs and professor of clinical dentistry, and Dr. Alan Rothstein, assistant professor of clinical dentistry, have coordinated program planning with Harvard and Penn.

The continuing education program is available to all dentists. Once it's fully implemented, it will include a special service for alumni of the three schools. Certification is offered through the courses and it's hoped, in Dr. Zimmerman's words, that the program will encourage "life-long learning."

For a preview of the Ivy Dental Consortium's on-line continuing education program, go to http://www.ivydent.org