Plans for dental school continue

Preparations for a dental program at A.T. Still University in Kirksville are underway with hopes of having its first incoming class in 2013.

In a February press conference A.T. Still University President Jack Magruder said the next step in constructing the dental school is getting capital requests approved by the Board of Trustees. To do this, the University currently is working to hire a vice dean to handle daily matters concerning the dental school and is seeking an architecture firm to draw a blueprint for the facilities.

The dental school will be a located on the A.T. Still campus as a branch of the Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health.

Douglas Wood, senior vice president of academic affairs, said Michael McManis, vice president for planning, conducted interviews for two of three architecture firms in Kansas City on Thursday morning.

Wood said in addition to making a blueprint for the dental school, the University is seeking a firm that will create master plans to modify both the Kirksville and Arizona campuses. The firm will determine what buildings the campuses will need in the future as well as make repairs to existing campus buildings.

"What should the future hold on this campus and the Arizona campus?" Wood said.  "[That is] relative to building needs. For instance, projecting the future, how many x, y, z types of buildings are we going to need here on the Missouri campus?"

Wood said after a firm is selected, the University will send out bids for a construction company to be contracted. He said the dental facility, which he estimates will be approximately 20,000 square feet, should be built relatively quickly.

"I would guess in less than a year that I think a building that size can be constructed, even though there is some special construction when you look at dental chairs that need to have water and electricity and all these kinds of things," Wood said. "We want that building constructed by maybe the end of 2012."

Wood said he estimates a vice dean will be hired within two months.       

"It's a huge project," Wood said. "We need someone on board pretty quickly."      

On April 1, A.T. Still received a grant from the Missouri Foundation of Health, which if proved to be used in a productive manner, could be worth up to $3 million during the next three years.

Wood said he doesn't think that the University has applied for additional grants but that it will in the future.

Magruder said in the long run, student tuition, which will be around  the national average for attending dental school at $50,000 per year, will pay for the majority of the school during a 15-20 year period.

Magruder said one of the top goals of the dental school will be to provide oral health care to underserved rural populations in Missouri. The University  currently is negotiating with five community health centers in Missouri cities. Magruder said there are approximately 20 CHCs in Missouri. In exchange for offering dental services, the CHCs will provide a learning environment for third year students beginning in 2015. The students will be supervised by practicing dentists.

Magruder said although the University is "pretty certain" they will be working with CHCs in Kirksville and Springfield, Mo., no contracts have been made yet. St. Louis, Sikeston and Sedalia are being pursued.

"[CHCs] are all quite different," Wood said. "They have different needs, demands and things like this, and that's understandably so. We're asking each of them to expand their dental facilities, which costs money, and we would like their patient mix to be about 50 percent kids and 50 percent adults."  

In February, Magruder said he estimated the school to cost between $20 million and $30 million. Heinz Woehlk, special assistant to Magruder, said he expects the final costs to be closer to $25 million.

Magruder said financial matters for the dental school are not the University's largest concern.

"Our biggest concern is getting all of the agreements in place with all of the community health centers and some private practicing dentists and hiring sufficient faculty to make it happen and in achieving accreditation by the American Dental Association," he said. "All of those things are, I think, more difficult to get together than financing the building."