Management of experiences in community-based dental education

The successful management of community-based service-learning relies on developing and maintaining community partnerships that meet both the educational mission of the dental school and the service mission of the community clinic. The partnership enhances the dental curriculum by introducing students to a wide variety of practice models, patient populations, and perspectives on health care delivery systems. The partnership enhances the service mission of the community sites by providing them with a university affiliation, a window into the state-of-the-art techniques that students bring with them from the dental school, and a pool of future graduates who may choose to practice in that clinic setting. This "win-win" scenario is not automatic, but rather relies on carefully matching, maintaining, and evaluating the service-learning partnerships. This article describes the development and implementation of the community-based service-learning curriculum in the College of Dentistry, University of Illinois at Chicago.