Education

Growth For Your Teeth

VCU breaks ground on addition to School of Dentistry

Growth For Your Teeth
Courtesy VCU
VCU's expansion on its School of Dentistry is slated for 2009.

David Hylton
Richmond.com
Friday, October 26, 2007

Virginia's only dental school is one step closer to being even bigger.

Virginia Commonwealth University broke ground Friday on a $20 million addition to the VCU School of Dentistry. The new building will be named in honor of alumnus W. Baxter Perkinson Jr.

Research labs, classrooms, conference facilities, dental clinics and faculty offices will be part of the four-story building. The 55,000-square-foot facility connects the existing School of Dentistry Wood and Lyons buildings and faces north onto Leigh Street, between 11th and 12th streets.

The building will increase the School of Dentistry's laboratory space, enabling faculty to expand their research in oral cancer as part of a collaboration with the VCU Massey Cancer Center. In a new partnership, faculty from the School of Dentistry will collaborate with faculty from the School of Engineering to create a new focus of research in dental bioengineering.

"This cross-campus collaboration marks an important trend for research at Virginia Commonwealth University," VCU President Eugene P. Trani said in a news release. "The sharing of interdisciplinary knowledge results in translational research that quickly takes discoveries from the laboratory to patients in clinics and improves the health and well-being of Virginians."

The new building permits the School of Dentistry to expand enrollment in its dental and dental hygiene education programs. The Doctor of Dental Surgery program will expand from 90 to 100 students each year, focusing on recruiting the 10 additional students from the dentally underserved areas of Southwest and Southside Virginia. The Dental Hygiene program will increase its enrollment from 20 to 40 new students annually.

Completion of the building is projected for summer 2009. The state has allocated $9.1 million toward the $20 million capital construction project.

VCU's School of Dentistry offers programs in dentistry and dental hygiene, as well as graduate programs in advanced general dentistry, endodontics, pediatric dentistry, periodontics, oral surgery and orthodontics.

The preceding was compiled from a Virginia Commonwealth University news release.

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