Dentistry School Maps Its Growth

The Dean of Harvard's School of Dental Medicine, Dr. Paul Goldhaber, has announced curriculum changes that will emphasize clinical practice and permit the school to expand enrollment.

Beginning in 1970, students will spend their first two years studying the "basic science core" of dental medicine, including the fundamentals of clinical dentistry. The final two years will center around group practice in a hospital.

Presently dental students and medical students follow almost identical programs of general science, and not until their third and fourth years do the future dentists get clinical practice.

By moving the third and fourth year students to hospitals, Goldhaber expects to free laboratory and classroom space for an increase in enrollment. The class of '75 will be about 24 students, 50% larger than the current size of 16.

Among the Smallest

Since reorganization over twenty-five years ago, Harvard's Dental School has been the smallest in the nation. Even with the anticipated growth, the school will rank among the smallest.

Early in the fall of 1967, Dr. Robert H. Ebert, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, hinted that all but specialist and post-doctoral programs might be discontinued. A committee of experts appointed by President Pusey, however, recommended in December only those curriculum changes that the School has implemented.

The committee's report ignored specialist training entirely, but as part of the reemphasis on clinical practice, Dr. Melvin I. Cohen has established a program of "continuing education."

Continuing education, long a service of medical schools, offers refresher courses to practicing dentists.

Pressure for the changes and expansion also came from the "profession and the government," the news office of the Dental School revealed yesterday.

The small class size and general science curriculum has tended to produce researchers and teachers, while there is a serious shortage of clinicians. Harvard is the only school in the nation where dental and medical students have nearly identical programs for the first two years.

Differentiation of medical and dental courses will not, the news office emphasized, mean greater specialization. Rather, it will give dental students a broader understanding of the profession and of the relationship of dentistry to other medical specialties.

Although the program does not require an immediate expansion of facilities, a "substantial" increase in endowment will be necessary to finance scholarships and additional faculty