Â鶹ÊÓƵ

Anthea Senior, Colleen Starchuk, and Steven Patterson.

Faculty and administrators at the Mike Petryk School of Dentistry are being celebrated by their peers worldwide for their bold reinvention of the curriculum for Â鶹ÊÓƵ dental students. 

In September, the school was named the recipient of the American Dental Education Association’s 2026 Gies Award for Eminence in Innovation.

“It’s a very significant award,” says Anthea Senior, a Â鶹ÊÓƵ professor of dentistry who worked with fellow professor Steven Patterson on the curriculum renewal project . “To be selected for the award when there was a record number of submissions from institutions worldwide is great recognition for our school.“

The school’s new curriculum was built to improve the student learning experience. Foundational content is now taught in a way that emphasizes its relevance to dental practice and students are in a clinic setting within the first month of dental school. “We were focused on getting to practical activity more quickly,” says Colleen Starchuk, the school’s manager of curriculum who led the educational-consultant group that guided the project. 

Before the renewal, students in the first two years of the four-year program often reported “they didn’t feel like they were really in dentistry,” says Senior. Dental students studied alongside the medical students and this impacted the scheduling of their dental courses.

Now, instead of 41 courses during the first two years of the program, there are 10 courses of between six-nine weeks duration, taught by a team of instructors  so that learning is integrated and relevant.

“At the beginning, we want to focus them on everything that’s involved, for example, in patient assessment and conducting a patient history,” says Starchuk. “So this involves  learning about oral anatomy and having practical experiences like what steps they take to complete a patient history and make practical observations. All that learning would typically occur across different disciplines and different times, but we are teaching them those critical skills in an all-encompassing way.”

In the clinic, students also receive near-peer assisted learning. A first- or second-year student helps in the care for a senior fourth-year student’s patients by taking histories, keeping records and eventually doing simple treatments.  

“It means the fourth-year student also gets a chance to do mentorship and coaching, which is a great experience since, when they go into practice, they’re going to be leading a team,” says Senior.

The American Dental Education Association represents 87 North American dental schools and its Gies Award is important recognition for the Mike Petryk School of Dentistry.  Planning and implementing this new curriculum while still delivering the old curriculum and doing so amidst budget constraints and the COVID-19 pandemic had its challenges.

The first graduating class to be completely trained via the new curriculum graduated in 2023, with 100 per cent reporting high satisfaction with it, says Senior. 

“This award is for the whole school, ” she emphasizes. The unwavering dedication and collaborative spirit of faculty, students and staff is a living testament to the school community pulling together to achieve something monumental, she said. “We are at the leading edge of curriculum innovation and other schools are very interested in what we did and how we did it.”