University of California San Francisco

I’m grateful for the support from this fund. The American Dental Education Association (ADEA), dental education’s equivalent of the AAMC, has an arm called the Commission on Change and Innovation (CCI). I am one of the UCSF School of Dentistry’s liaisons. In this capacity I attend multiple meetings per year. The Chancellor’s Award in Learning & Development funds allowed me to attend one of the summer meetings. My colleague, Jennifer Perkins, and I were able to present a poster on a cross-disciplinary approach to integrating systemic health into the teaching and assessment of dental students. Additionally, we learned frameworks for change management for curriculum innovations, discussed issues that dental schools across the US and Canada are facing, and brainstormed ideas to overcome the common challenges. Jennifer and I have been able to bring our work back to UCSF and apply what we have learned through our work on the Curriculum Steering Committee.

Sophia Saeed, DMD

My award was used to attend the Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists Annual Session in Reno in October. It is a three day meeting with lectures morning and afternoon. It is always very powerful in the level of support for my active didactic teaching, and for my clinical supervision. Several lectures on evidence based orthodontic care we extremely valuable and will be passed on to residents and faculty.

Jerry Nelson, DDS
Orthodontic Program Coordinator

The original workshop I planned to attend conflicted with a leadership program that I was nominated for, so instead I found another place to facilitate this training. I traveled to a lab at the University of Michigan that specializes on biofilm imaging and learned about their set up and parameters. This proved to be extremely helpful, since I was able to reproduce this type of set up here at UCSF by using my confocal microscope. We can now produce quality 3D oral biofilm images. I have extended this capability to another lab; that of Dr. Ling Zhan. This has proven fruitful for submission of presentations, research day posters, and will now be used for publications and grant submissions.

Yvonne Kapila, DDS, PhD

My award was used to attend AcademyHealth which is the premier meeting of health services researchers (HRS) around the country. In 2017 for the first time, they introduced a conference theme on oral health, and the sessions and poster presentations (mine included) were very well attended. As well, they held a meeting about starting an interest group (IG), which would meet on pre-conference day. Due to the participation both in the theme, and at this meeting, they decided to go ahead with forming the IG. I was asked to serve on the advisory board. We will be reviewing our first set of abstracts January, 2018. I am so glad I was able to advance the inclusion of oral health into this body of research and work, and look forward to continued work to expand HSR in the dental field. To translate this back to my work at UCSF, I present annually to dental and dental hygiene students in several different courses about what HSR is and why it is important.

Elizabeth Mertz, PhD

Dear Members of the Academic Senate,

The 2017 SOD Faculty Learning and Development Award allowed me the opportunity to attend the 93rd Congress of the European Orthodontic Society in Montreux, Switzerland in June 2017.I presented a poster on our research “Effect of Rapid Maxillary Expansion and Protraction on Oropharyngeal Airway in Individuals with Nonsyndromic Cleft Lip and/or Palate”. It was a wonderful opportunity to highlight our research at this international meeting. The feedback I received after the poster presentation was very positive and I also had an opportunity to network and learn about the work of my orthodontic colleagues from all over the world. I was able to bring back the knowledge I gained at this conference, and teach our residents and fellows, especially on techniques on closing spaces for missing teeth in children with cleft lip and palate using mini-implants. Thank you again for this great opportunity.

I would like to take this opportunity, to thank the Chancellor and the Dean for identifying the need to support faculty who want to dedicate themselves to an academic career. I really appreciate the Dean providing matching funds to increase the number of faculty who can avail themselves of this opportunity.

Sincerely,
Snehlata Oberoi, BDS, DDS,MDS