Prospective Students /

Welcome from the Dean

Welcome to the University of Southern Nevada College of Dental Medicine (CODM). The CODM was founded in 2007 at the Henderson, Nev. Campus with an initial program offering of Advanced Education in Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics Residency (AEODO), combined with a Master in Business Administration (MBA). It is the first program of its kind to require an MBA to develop residents’ business and financial skills along with their orthodontic skills. In 2010 we broke ground on a new building at the South Jordan, Utah campus that will offer the first Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD) degree in the state of Utah.
 
USN has a well-established history of leadership in health care sciences education, and the AEODO/MBA and DMD are no different. The CODM utilizes USN’s innovative mastery learning model, with courses organized in a block curriculum. Rather than competing with other students to achieve high grades on a “curve”, students work together and everyone is expected to achieve competency at a high level in order to progress through the program. 
 
Students at USN CODM also experience a unique classroom setting, with interactive and immersive technology, and state-of-the-art equipment that allows students and faculty to connect using a variety of instructional techniques, moving beyond the traditional lecture format. 
 
As a non-profit institution of higher learning, USN does not have conventional academic departments. Instead, faculty from programs throughout the university work in an interdisciplinary setting to determine the best direction for teaching and curriculum. This inter-professional approach allows USN CODM faculty to be leaders in dental education while drawing on the knowledge of the pharmacy and nursing professionals they work alongside. Both faculty and students can participate in interdisciplinary teaching and research with pharmacy, nursing, and the MBA program. 
 
Residents in the AEODO/MBA program work in a USN clinical facility and offer affordable orthodontic care to the local community under the supervision of trained and licensed faculty, getting hands-on training rather than just doing clinical simulations in a lab. In the future, students in the DMD program will offer the same affordable care for dental patients in Utah. These competency-based approaches maximize practical education so the transition from classroom to active patient care is seamless.
 
In the new DMD program and the existing AEODO/MBA residency program, we hope that students will not see this as merely a place to take classes for a degree, but as a place where you can develop lifelong colleagues with your peers, your instructors, and the faculty and staff at the USN CODM. 
 
We believe that dental medicine is an honorable profession, and we will provide every student with the specific knowledge and skills to become dental professionals. We hope you will also embrace the values we believe in—that the welfare of your patient takes precedence over all other priorities, that we hold the public’s trust, and that we must commit to build and sustain these values in order to uphold that trust.
 
The opportunity to be part of a new program and create an innovative direction for dental education does not come often, and we are excited that you are considering our program for your pre-doctoral or post-doctoral dental education. 
 
Sincerely,
 
Richard Buchanan, DMD
Dean, College of Dental Medicine