Dental school faculty and the academic environment from 1936 to 2011: familiar features in a new context

From its first issue in 1936 until today, no subject has been more central to the work published in the Journal of Dental Education (JDE) and to dental education itself than the dental school faculty. William Gies's vision in 1926 of the professionalization of dental educators was key to the professionalization of dental education. His focus on the need to develop these teachers as both instructors and researchers established the model by which a "dental educator" became a distinct professional, different from a dentist who happens to teach. This article for the seventy-fifth anniversary issue of the JDE thus starts from the obvious but not always acknowledged point that faculty members are central to the entire enterprise of dental education and relate to change over time as both cause and effect. Whether the profession today is evolving to incorporate new science and curricular models or becoming more interprofessional or meeting the needs of diverse patient populations or adopting new educational methodologies and technologies, developments in these areas will have a direct impact on the way individual faculty members do their jobs. To give a taste of the rich variety published over the past seventy-five years, the first section touches briefly on three significant types of research regarding faculty as exemplified by articles published in the JDE. These three are faculty development, educational methodologies, and faculty recruitment and retention. The second section addresses an increasingly important area of research: faculty members' perceptions of the academic work environment. After considering some trends that will affect this environment over the next decade, the article concludes with additional reasons the JDE is a valuable resource for faculty members in dental schools and allied and advanced dental education programs.