Faculty Bibliography

We do not really teach ethics, we teach about ethics - a subtle but crucial distinction. Ethics curricula are qualitatively inadequate to the extent that they focus on delivering content rather than on influencing lives. This article approaches ethics education from the perspective of 3 levels of learning: informative, formative, and transformative, and it asserts that conventional ethics courses confine themselves to informative learning but fail to transition effectively into the formative and transformative phases in which authentic behavioral change becomes plausible. Two assumptions are made: (1) that students are no more ethical than the man in the street and (2) people always can change for the better. Although arguable, it is safer to make these assumptions because only in doing so is it possible to avoid designing ethics curricula solely for the purpose of delivering information, and thereby underscoring the importance of transitioning students through all 3 levels of learning. Transformative learning in ethics must be experiential, requiring a conscious and volitional effort by educators to inculcate realistic but heroic expectations for professionals whose work intrinsically embodies elements of the heroic. This is not that difficult if we can help students see their own heroic potential. 2011 by Begell House, Inc

The article presents a speech by Charles N. Bertolami, president-elect of the American Dental Education Association (ADEA), delivered at the 85th ADEA Annual Session and Exhibition in Dallas, Texas on April 2, 2008, in which he discussed the achievements of ADEA under his management

Building the faculty of the future has to be rooted in understanding the nature of future oral health delivery practices. Unfortunately, no one can reliably predict that future. Accepting any given scenario inevitably requires a leap of faith, but the cost of guessing wrong is high. In considering full-time academic careers, students are often not well prepared to make such a definitive choice. When dental educators ask dental students to consider academic life, what we are really doing is trying to induce them to make a very dramatic break with their settled career aspirations, which have already been firmly established in the minds of many of our students. The reality is that being a full-time professor of dentistry is more like being a professor in any other university discipline than it is like being a dentist in practice. Thus, the appeal of dental school to most applicants as a pathway to a practice/business career and existing admissions practices unintentionally bias the system against identifying future educators. Dental education is now engaged in a predictable blend of temporary, short-term, intermediate, and long-term approaches to finding faculty. Among these approaches are the following: cannibalizing other dental schools, collaborating with other professional schools, recruiting retired dentists, and growing our own faculty based on positive role modeling. The high cost of a dental education and the relatively low compensation of dental faculty are disincentives for some students who might otherwise consider dental education as a career option. However, the differential compensation between faculty members and owner/proprietors of dental practices may be misleading because of the business risks the latter assume. Understanding this means that dental schools might be more successful in finding future faculty by focusing on dental school applicants who fit the profile of employees rather than businesspeople because the lifetime differential in income nearly vanishes when comparisons are made between the categories of faculty member and employed dentist. At present, educators rely on a lack of self-knowledge among students in the hope that some who thought they wanted to be dentists will discover that they are ill-suited for practice and can be converted to becoming educators instead. It is not an optimal arrangement. Among practical suggestions to enhance recruitment of faculty are innovations in imprinting students early with the identity of being an educator and, in association with this concept, assisting with financing the education of future teachers. Ultimately, success in the dental educational enterprise will depend on attracting individuals who are intrinsically captivated by teaching as a moral vocation

The impact our ethics curricula have on students seems marginal at best. Students take the ethics courses we offer and pass the tests we give, but no one's behavior changes as a result. We fundamentally see ourselves teaching about ethics, which is slightly different than teaching ethics--and expecting behavior to change as a result of what is taught. The premise of this article is that our ethics courses are inadequate in content and form to the extent that they do not cultivate an introspective orientation to professional life. In some cases, they amount to little more than a study of various state dental practice acts or the Code of Ethics of the American Dental Association. Three specific weaknesses are identified in a typical ethics curriculum: 1) failure to recognize that more education is not the answer to everything; 2) ethics is boring; and 3) course content is qualitatively inadequate because it does not foster an introspective basis for true behavioral change. A fourth element, an innovation, is directed to this third weakness and entails implementing a precurriculum very early in the dental educational experience to address the disconnect between knowledge and action

Keloids are skin fibrotic conditions characterized by an excess accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) components secondary to trauma or surgical injuries. Previous studies have shown that plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) can be upregulated by hypoxia and may contribute to keloid pathogenesis. In this study we investigate the signaling mechanisms involved in hypoxia-mediated PAI-1 expression in keloid fibroblasts. Using Northern and Western blot analysis, transient transfections, and pharmacological agents, we demonstrate that hypoxia-induced upregulation of PAI-1 expression is mainly controlled by hypoxia inducible factors-1alpha (HIF-1alpha) and that hypoxia leads to a rapid and transient activation of phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase/Akt (PI3-K/Akt) and extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2). Treatment of cells with PI-3K/Akt inhibitor (LY294002) and tyrosine protein kinase inhibitor (genistein) significantly attenuated hypoxia-induced PAI-1 mRNA and protein expression as well as promoter activation, apparently via an inhibition of the hypoxia-induced stabilization of HIF-1alpha protein, attenuation of the steady-state level of HIF-1alpha mRNA, and its DNA-binding activity. Even though disruption of ERK1/2 signaling pathway by PD98059 abolished hypoxia-induced PAI-1 promoter activation and mRNA/protein expression in keloid fibroblasts, it did not inhibit the hypoxia-mediated stabilization of HIF-1alpha protein and the steady-state level of HIF-1alpha mRNA nor its DNA binding activity. Our findings suggest that a combination of several signaling pathways, including ERK1/2, PI3-K/Akt, and protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs), may contribute to the hypoxia-mediated induction of PAI-1 expression via activation of HIF-1alpha in keloid fibroblasts

The impact our ethics curricula have on students seems marginal at best. Students take the ethics courses we offer and pass the tests we give, but no one's behavior changes as a result. We fundamentally see ourselves teaching about ethics, which is slightly different than teaching ethics--and expecting behavior to change as a result of what is taught. The premise of this article is that our ethics courses are inadequate in content and form to the extent that they do not cultivate an introspective orientation to professional life. In some cases they amount to little more than a study of various state dental practice acts or the Code of Ethics of the American Dental Association. Three specific weaknesses are identified in a typical ethics curriculum: 1) failure to recognize that more education is not the answer to everything; 2) ethics is boring; and 3) course content is qualitatively inadequate because it does not foster an introspective basis for true behavioral change. A fourth element, an innovation, is directed to this third weakness and entails implementing a precurriculum very early in the dental educational experience to address the disconnect between knowledge and action