University of Sydney Handbooks - 2012 Archive

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Welcome

Dean of Dentistry

At the University of Sydney, we have been providing oral health education and training since 1901. Dentistry is part of Australia's most comprehensive group of health faculties, the Division of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy and the Division of Health Sciences. This breadth and depth in health education and research at Sydney provides our students with outstanding opportunities in research and education which ultimately provide gains in sustainable, innovative and excellent health care. This underscores our purpose of an absolute commitment to the community's health through oral health education, training and intellectual discovery.

We provide a suite of coursework and research training programs that maximise the potential of our students. We are privileged to have the most promising students enrol in our faculty and we strive to enhance and maximise their potential.

Research training is available at the Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Philosophy levels across biological and clinical sciences, population oral health and educational research. One of the faculty's goals is to integrate our basic and applied research activities to ultimately improve health in the community. We will achieve this through engaged enquiry, where we engage researchers, teachers and the community. We have a focus on ageing well/ageing productively and on chronic diseases. The majority of our research is competitively funded through the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Research Council and Australian Dental Research Foundation, and we have strong links with the Institute for Dental Research at Westmead Centre for Oral Health. I encourage you to have a look at the research area of our website and contact our research units for more information. We are always on the lookout for active minds interested in a research career.

Our coursework programs cover the majority of general and specialist dental practice and public dental health. In these courses, the common goal is to develop graduates who are lifelong learners committed to the highest professional and ethical standards. We work closely with the Faculty of Medicine in the delivery of our Oral Health and Dentistry degrees. Our postgraduate education has a major focus of advancing clinical skills for dentists and we also offer a unique opportunity for those interested in population oral health to enrol in a postgraduate degree. Here we work closely with the School of Public Health and the NSW Health Department to develop graduates for a career in public health. For those looking for short courses, our continuing education program has a broad range of courses to meet every enquiring mind.

Whilst our most important assets and focus are our students, we could not achieve our purpose without our staff and university, government, industry and dental profession collaborations. We have enormous talent in our academic and administrative staff and this explains why we are able to provide the large range of courses on offer. We are part of one of Australia's leading universities that is committed to the pursuit of excellence and where the health faculties work closely together to meet the needs of Australia and beyond. We are fortunate to have strong partnerships with the practising dental community, the NSW Health Department, the Australian Dental Association and the dental industry. These partners provide us with expertise, practical insight and resources for our academic activities.

We look forward to you joining us whether it is as a student, staff member or individual or group interested in the future of dentistry.

Professor Chris Peck
Dean of Dentistry