Mission

The goals of the Dental Student Research Program are to expose and involve highly qualified dental students to dental, oral and craniofacial research so as to 1) instill critical thinking through research experience; 2) assist faculty research and support the scholarly mission of the college; 3) encourage students to consider dental academics and research as career options

As a part of this program we hope to 1) stimulate student interest and participation in oral health research which is not currently available in the general dental curriculum and  2) foster collaboration between student trainees and faculty mentors and encourage the trainees to become involved in the design, conduct and reporting of research.

The Programs specific training objectives include:

• Acquiring detailed knowledge of an area of research using contemporary methods for literature searching and data mining;

• Instruction in study design; involving  development of a hypothesis, planning of experiments and  incorporation of   appropriate statistical analysis

• Acquisition of  specific laboratory research skills as appropriate to the investigation;

• Learning how to prepare and communicate information  to the scientific community; and

• Achieving a sense of identification with the scientific community through participation in such activities as local, regional and national research meetings.