Dalhousie University. Faculty of Dentistry
- Corporate body (Dalhousie University)
- 1908 -
The Faculty of Dentistry is the only dental school east of Montreal and educates over three-quarters of dentists practising in Atlantic Canada. Dalhousie created the faculty in 1908 in affiliation with the recently established Maritime Dental College for the purpose of examining candidates and conferring the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery. Dalhousie also provided lecture and clinical facilities in what is now known as the Forrest Building; in 1912 Dalhousie also assumed responsibility for instruction, and the four students who graduated that year did so as the first class in the Faculty of Dentistry. Teaching continued to be carried out by part-time dental practitioners; with the exception of a brief period in the late forties, until 1953 there was only one full-time faculty member, J. Stanley Bagnall, who himself had graduated from Dalhousie in 1921.
The introduction of government grants as well as private donations and gifts from the Kellogg Foundation enabled the dental school to expand dramatically throughout the 1950s, including the number of full-time faculty, the creation of a school of dental hygiene, and the building of the current Dentistry Building at the corner of Robie Street and University Avenue. By 1967 there were 15 full-time academic staff and 31 part-time faculty members, supported by 20 administrative and technical personnel.
In 1969 the faculty, which, since its beginnings, had operated as a single administrative department, established four departments: Oral Biology; Oral Medicine and Surgery; Restorative Dentistry; and Paediatric and Community Dentistry, with independent department heads or chairs. Today the faculty comprises the School of Dental Hygiene and the departments of Dental Clinical Sciences, Applied Oral Sciences and Oral and Maxillofacial Sciences, each made up of its own internal divisions.