Preparing faculty members for significant curricular revisions in a school of dental medicine

Resistance to change is expected, especially when change involves and impacts many stakeholders. During the past year, the Curriculum Committee at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine has been preparing the dental school for a major curricular revision of its predoctoral program. This article describes how a faculty retreat was designed to gain support for and involvement in this reform process. In particular, it examines the results of a faculty survey that was used to shape the retreat and was developed to determine the faculty's perceived knowledge about instructional design, barriers to innovations in teaching, and the influence of student evaluations and evidence-based dentistry principles on faculty teaching. Having identified strengths and weaknesses and areas of concern among faculty members through the survey, the Curriculum Committee was able to prepare a retreat that addressed faculty needs while simultaneously advancing the movement towards curriculum reform.