Overview
Welcome to Indiana University School of Dentistry, one of the oldest and largest public dental schools in the United States. Many of the dental profession’s “firsts” took place at Indiana University, including the inventions of the first bitewing X-ray and the stannous fluoride formula that would become Crest® toothpaste, as well as authorship of seminal textbooks in pediatric dentistry, biomaterials, and oral radiology.
On any given weekday, more than 1,000 students, faculty, and staff work, learn, and grow on our dental school campuses. In fact, 80 percent of the state’s dentists graduated from IU School of Dentistry. The remainder practice dentistry and allied fields in nearly all of the 50 states and about 30 other countries.
Our research enterprise continues to flourish. Last year, we received the highest number of federal grants in the past decade and doubled the amount of federal research funding from $2 million to $4.5 million, allowing us to expand our scope of clinical and translational oral health research, our Dental Informatics program, and our collaborative basic science research in bone and musculoskeletal health.
We continue to modernize our curriculum, integrating digital technology into patient care and providing earlier and more clinical experiences for all dental students. Over the next few years, we will grow our clinical operations by renovating our Orthodontics clinic and creating a new special care dentistry clinic to treat patients with physical, intellectual, and developmental disabilities and complex medical conditions--a population that is historically underserved.
Indiana University School of Dentistry (IUSD) is a member of the American Dental Education Association and is fully accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation of the American Dental Association. IU’s dental school was established as the Indiana Dental College in 1879 and acquired by Indiana University in 1925. It is the only dental school in the state. The school is located on the campus of IU Indianapolis, adjacent to the Indiana University Medical Center. Clinical facilities in the School of Dentistry were modernized and expanded in 2018 with the addition of the state-of-the-art, 45,000-square-foot James J. Fritts, D.D.S. Clinical Care Center.
Clinic patients are drawn from a population area of about one million people. The great variety of cases treated provides each student with abundant opportunities to master techniques. The school also maintains dental clinics at Riley Hospital for Children; University Hospital at the IU Medical Center; Indiana University Fort Wayne; the Stone Family Health Center in Evansville, Ind., and numerous off-campus sites, many in federally qualified community health centers.
Multiple degrees and certificate programs are available at IUSD, including D.D.S., M.S.D., M.S. in advanced practice specialties, Ph.D., Dental Hygiene and Dental Assisting.
We are also immensely proud of the clinical care provided by our students and faculty outside the dental school. Our community-based dental education places our students in dental practices and federally qualified health centers throughout the state.
Over the spring and summer, our students and faculty cared for underserved communities in Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, on the Texas/Mexico border, and at a South Dakota Indian reservation.
This Academic Bulletin describes the opportunities available at Indiana University School of Dentistry in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne and outlines the requirements for admission and program completion. Undergraduate programs in allied dentistry are offered on the Northwest (Gary), and South Bend campuses. Students interested in undergraduate programs at IU Northwest and South Bend should check with a counselor on these campuses for specific requirements, which may vary from the requirements on the Indianapolis and Fort Wayne campuses.
While every effort is made to provide accurate and current information, Indiana University reserves the right to change without notice statements in the bulletin series concerning rules, policies, fees, curricula, courses, or other matters.