Professor of Dentistry

A Professor of Dentistry occupies the overlap between clinical practice, higher education, and health sciences research — and must perform credibly across all three areas regardless of formal appointment track. The teaching load is the most visible part of the job: standing in front of a lecture hall of first-year students walking through periodontology concepts one hour, then supervising a third-year student working through a complex crown preparation on a live patient the next, then reviewing a resident's operative notes before the end of the clinic day.

Clinical supervision is where dental faculty earn their pay in ways that don't show up on CVs. When a student's prep is over-reduced, or a resident's margin placement is questionable, the faculty member has to make a real-time decision about whether the work can proceed or needs to be corrected — with a patient in the chair, a student watching, and the clock running. That judgment comes from years of clinical experience, and dental schools need faculty who have it.

The research dimension is more prominent at R1 universities with dental schools than at freestanding dental colleges, but even teaching-focused institutions expect faculty to contribute to scholarship — whether through original basic or clinical research, educational outcomes research, case reports, or systematic reviews. Extramural funding, even modest HRSA workforce development grants, signals institutional citizenship and shores up a promotion file.

Behind all of this is CODA. The Commission on Dental Accreditation sets the standards that dental programs must meet to grant accredited degrees, and it reviews those standards continuously. Faculty live inside the accreditation infrastructure whether they think about it consciously or not: every competency assessment submitted in the clinic, every revised learning objective in a course syllabus, and every outcome reported in an annual program evaluation is a data point the program will use to demonstrate compliance. Faculty who understand this context and build it into their work rather than treating it as administrative overhead are more valuable than those who don't.

The work schedule is not the flexibility-at-will that dental school often looks like from the outside. Clinic sessions are scheduled, classes meet on a fixed calendar, committee obligations are real, and research doesn't happen without protected time that has to be carved out around everything else. It is a demanding role that suits people who genuinely want to teach and who find clinical supervision as rewarding as their own patient care.

Degrees and clinical credentials:

• DDS or DMD from a CODA-accredited dental school (required for all faculty)
• Certificate of specialty training in an ADA-recognized specialty (required for specialty department positions; strongly preferred for general dentistry faculty)
• Board certification (Diplomate status) from the relevant specialty board — ABOMS, ABP, ABPD, ABO, ABENDO, etc.
• PhD in oral biology, biomedical science, dental public health, or related field (required for tenure-track research positions at most R1 dental schools)

Licensure:

• Active state dental license in the jurisdiction of appointment
• DEA registration for faculty with prescriptive responsibilities
• Faculty permit or equivalent where state law distinguishes faculty clinical practice from private practice licensure

Teaching preparation:

• Formal training in instructional design or curriculum development (Certificate in Dental Education, Graduate Certificate in Health Professions Education, or equivalent)
• Experience with competency-based assessment frameworks and objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) design
• Familiarity with simulation technology: typodont models, haptic simulation, 3D-printed anatomical models

Research skills (tenure-track):

• Track record of peer-reviewed publication at the assistant professor level; independent or co-investigator grant history expected for promotion to associate
• Proficiency with relevant research methods: clinical trial design, systematic review and meta-analysis, basic science laboratory techniques, or health services research methods depending on specialty
• NIH grant writing experience, particularly R01 and R03 mechanisms for clinical researchers

Clinical and digital skills:

• Current proficiency with the digital dentistry tools taught in the curriculum: CEREC or equivalent CAD/CAM, digital impression systems (iTero, TRIOS), cone beam CT interpretation
• AI-assisted radiographic analysis platforms (Overjet, Pearl) are entering clinical curricula at leading schools
• Electronic health record and dental practice management software used in the faculty clinic

The dental faculty shortage in the United States is documented, persistent, and getting worse. ADEA surveys have tracked unfilled full-time faculty positions at accredited dental schools for over a decade, and the vacancy rate has not improved meaningfully. The root cause is economic: a graduating dental specialist can earn more in the first year of private practice than most assistant professor salaries, and the path to financial parity through academic rank progression is long. That gap creates a structural recruitment problem that individual dental schools cannot solve unilaterally.

What this means for qualified candidates in 2025–2026 is real negotiating leverage. Schools that previously posted positions and waited are now pursuing candidates directly, offering loan repayment packages, accelerated rank consideration, and flexible practice arrangements to close the compensation gap. Research-active candidates with specialty boards who are willing to consider academic careers have more options than the nominal supply of postings suggests — many positions are filled through direct recruitment before they are ever publicly advertised.

The demand side is also growing. New dental schools continue to receive CODA accreditation — roughly 70 accredited dental programs operate in the U.S. today, compared to under 60 fifteen years ago — and each new program requires a substantial founding faculty cohort. Existing programs are expanding class sizes to address access-to-care concerns, which requires additional clinical faculty to maintain supervision ratios.

Digital dentistry and AI integration are creating a secondary demand driver: programs that lack faculty with digital workflow expertise are under competitive pressure from students and accreditors alike. Faculty who have kept pace with CAD/CAM, guided surgery, and AI diagnostic tools have skills that are genuinely scarce in academic settings.

The longer-term picture for dental education is tied to the broader access-to-care conversation. Federal HRSA funding for dental school infrastructure and workforce training has been significant, and programs with strong track records of training students who practice in underserved areas have access to grant resources that stabilize their faculty budgets. Political uncertainty around federal health education funding introduces some risk, but the underlying demand for dental services — and therefore for dentists and dental educators — is not going away.

For a dental specialist who finds teaching genuinely rewarding and can accept that the compensation ceiling is lower than private practice, the academic career offers job security, intellectual engagement, access to research resources, and the compound satisfaction of training hundreds of clinicians over a career. For those who enter reluctantly to fill a gap year, the workload tends to come as a surprise.

Dear Search Committee,

I am applying for the Assistant Professor position in Endodontics at [Dental School]. I completed my advanced education in endodontics at [Program] in 2021 and have been in private specialty practice since then while maintaining a part-time clinical instructor appointment at [Dental School], where I supervise predoctoral students in the endodontic clinic two days per week.

That supervisory work is what has convinced me to pursue a full-time faculty role. I have found that I spend most of my clinical time in private practice thinking about how to explain what I'm doing — to myself, in terms of the evidence, and to the patient. In the teaching clinic, that instinct is the job. I have revised the case selection rubric for third-year endo rotation twice in the last year based on patterns I noticed in student performance on access opening and working length determination, and both changes have been incorporated into the current curriculum.

My research interest is in outcomes for vital pulp therapy in mature permanent teeth — a literature that is moving quickly since the MTA and bioceramic sealer studies. I do not yet have a publication record beyond a case series submitted to the Journal of Endodontics, but I have identified a retrospective dataset at [Dental School] that could support a three-year outcomes study, and I am prepared to develop it with a faculty mentor during my first two years.

I hold Diplomate status from the American Board of Endodontics, am licensed in [State], and can be available to begin a clinical appointment no later than [Date]. I would welcome a conversation about how the department's research priorities align with what I'm developing.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Your Name]