Strong women form founding core of new KCU dental school in Joplin

Jun. 9—Call them the Founding Five. Call them the Fluoride Five.

Dr. Linda Niessen, the dean of Kansas City University's new dental school in Joplin, has gathered around her a strong core of insightful female doctors to create the curriculum and culture that will guide the first students who enter this school on July 31, 2023.

The school is set to open its doors on June 26, and Niessen and her four colleagues that make up the school's founding faculty are all committed to creating a dental school that teaches new dentists to go out and care for the world with kindness at the center of their practices.

"We're going to approach students with kindness and we're going to approach patients with kindness, and the reason we approach students with kindness is we're teaching students to approach patients with kindness," Niessen said. "Students learn from what they watch, they watch how you act, it doesn't matter what you say. If you've been a parent you figure that out, you can say anything you want to your kids, they watch what you do, they learn from how you behave and they can spot the hypocrite quickly. So it's important for us to approach each other with kindness, to approach the students with kindness so we all approach the patients with kindness. Because we're in the health care business and people need kindness today."

The first faculty members she recruited are:

—Dr Katie Champion, who is director of clinical operations at the KCU dental school, is a graduate of Nova Southeastern College of Dental Medicine and is enrolled in Harvard's master of medical education program.

—Dr. Sharon Gordon, tabbed as associate dean for academic affairs and research and as a professor, has degrees from Johns Hopkins University.

—Dr Erinne Kennedy, assistant dean for curriculum and integrated learning, is the architect of the KCU dental school's innovative curriculum and another graduate from Nova Southeastern University College of Dental Medicine in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She completed a dental public health residency at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

—Dr. Diane Ede-Nichols, associate dean for clinical education and patient care, and a professor, completed her general practice residency at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irvine Medical Center, and earned her master's degrees in health law and public health at Nova Southeastern University's Shepherd Broad College of Law and College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Strides

While women have made great strides in the dental field — about 50% of dental students in America are women — they are still working their way into leadership positions in dental associations and dental schools.

"In 2023, women in leadership shouldn't be an issue," Niessen said. "As the oldest among the group, I can tell you I went to dental school when there were a handful of women dentists. So I've seen tremendous changes, women dentists went from 3% to now we're 36%, which is fabulous. But we haven't been in the leadership of dental education, we haven't been deans, we haven't been professors. The data if you look at dental education will show you that right now women make up a small fraction of the deans in the 70 dental schools in the U.S."

Champion, the director of clinical operations, said the important part of having strong women in leadership posts at KCU is the impression it leaves on students.

"I think a really important part of representation is visibility," Champion said. "And having five really strong women leaders in this school that students can see leading and see in these positions of power in this dental school is empowering the females who are coming up in dentistry, and it's not about just going into practice because we know we have women practicing dentists. It's about having those leadership roles and being able to see that represented in our university. That's a really powerful thing, and I thank Dr. Niessen for having the foresight to recognize leadership in the women she surrounds herself with and to promote that within her circle. That's really how we got here and that's something I hope to do with the next generations of students."

Building curriculum

Kennedy, assistant dean for curriculum and learning, said building a new curriculum for a new dental school was a new and exciting challenge for her.

"It was one piece at a time," Kennedy said. "There's that long-standing joke, how do you put together a puzzle? And it's one piece at a time. So we started out with this overarching vision of what we wanted to do. And in dentistry, thankfully, there's competency statements and standards that we have to teach students and help students develop, so we started with those and we designed a curriculum to achieve all of those and we did it with kindness. So when we looked at the schedule, we designed a schedule that simulates how you would learn about and deliver patient care.

Niessen said one of Kennedy's challenges was teaching the faculty how to teach the new curriculum. She said the curriculum takes the humanistic trend in teaching medicine and dentistry that started in the 1990s and moves it to a new level.

"In the past, maybe in the 1980s, dental school was often compared to being in the Marine Corps, Niessen said. "It was very structured, very rigid, you either complied or you didn't. In the 1990s, we saw humanism enter dental education, and I think what we're doing with this dental school is we're taking the humanism to the next level. As Dr. Kennedy said, we're approaching students with kindness, we're approaching issues with kindness and, when I use the Ted Lasso analogy, we are going to love these students until they're successful. And some are going to need more love in the dean's office than others, but we're going to love them until they're successful."

Still to come

Niessen said the KCU faculty had their first real experience of the joy of teaching dentistry when they accepted their first 80-student class on Dec. 15, 2022.

With all the construction and planning and development and hiring that goes into creating a new dental school, the one thing that is still missing will arrive on July 31, when the students from that first class arrive in Joplin.

"I'm listening to everyone speaking I'm sort of reminiscing over the last two and a half years of building, and building has been great, but there's a piece missing," said Ede-Nichols, the associate dean for clinical education and patient care. "The piece missing is the students. They bring the enthusiasm, the joy, the purpose, the reason for what we're doing. And they will truly follow you. I have students that keep in contact with me from my very first teaching position in 1994. That's what fills you, that's what makes you feel like you did a good job, when they contact you, reach out, say thinking about you, happy Mother's Day. All the little things, that is what just fills you up and gets you going and inspires you to keep teaching and to keep working with each new class of students. That's the very best part, students are the very best part of what we do."