The School of Dentistry is a

dental school A dental school (school of dental medicine, school of dentistry, dental college) is a tertiary educational institution—or part of such an institution—that teaches dental medicine to prospective dentists and potentially other dental auxiliari ...

at the

University of Missouri-Kansas City A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

. The School of Dentistry is located on

Hospital Hill Hospital Hill is a neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri. The neighborhood is located between 22nd Street to 25th Street and Gillham Road to Troost Avenue. This name reflects the geography and a history of public hospitals on the site since 1 ...

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more t ...

, close to the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Medicine, Truman Medical Center-Hospital Hill and

Children's Mercy Hospital Children's Mercy Kansas City is a 390-bed medical center in Kansas City, Missouri providing care for pediatric patients. The hospital's primary service area covers a 150-county area in Missouri and Kansas. Children's Mercy received national re ...

. __TOC__

History

UMKC is the only public dental school in Missouri and trained approximately two thirds of the dentists practicing in Missouri. It enrolls approximately 110 students each year in its 4-year DDS program. It also has an RDH program, an AEGD program, as well as specialty residencies in Periodontics, Orthodontics, Endodontics, and Oral Surgery. The dental school was established in 1881 as the Kansas City Dental College and was originally part of Kansas City Medical College. The Kansas City Dental College merged with Western Dental College to form the Kansas City-Western Dental College. In 1941, the Dental College affiliated with the privately supported University of Kansas City and became that institution's School of Dentistry. In 1961 the University of Kansas City joined the four-campus state University of Missouri system. Since then the dental school has been known as the UMKC School of Dentistry. During World War II, in response internment of Japanese Americans, then dean Roy J. Rinehart sought to take in Japanese-American dental students who were unfairly expelled from West Coast schools. The school continues to take several students from Hawaii each year since then and has a strong alumni presence in Hawaii. In 1965, Dr. Donald Randolph Brown, Sr. DDS became the school's first

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

graduate. Construction of a new dental clinic is planned for completion in May of 2026. The new Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Building, an approximately 125,000-square-foot, five-story facility, is planned on a university-owned lot at 25th and Charlotte streets. It will contain dental clinics as well as medical offices.

Alumni

* Copeland Shelden * Howard Farran, class of 1987 (founder of DentalTown) * George Hollenback, class of 1907 (inventor of Hollenback carver)

References

Dentistry Dentistry, also known as dental medicine and oral medicine, is the branch of medicine focused on the Human tooth, teeth, gums, and Human mouth, mouth. It consists of the study, diagnosis, prevention, management, and treatment of diseases, dis ...

Dental schools in Missouri Universities and colleges established in 1881 1881 establishments in Missouri {{Missouri-university-stub