UB dental school finishes first phase of $25 million pre-clinic and clinic renovation

The School of Dental Medicine has completed the first phase of a $25 million renovation of the school’s pre-clinical simulation center and patient clinics.

The first phase, a portion of the $11 million remodel of the pre-clinical simulation center, is the school’s first major renovation in more than 30 years and begins the transformation of Squire Hall into a state-of-the-art educational and clinical treatment facility.

“Dentistry has entered the digital age and our job as an educational institution is to prepare our students for practice five years from now and 20 years from now,” says Joseph Zambon, dean of the School of Dental Medicine.

The new center represents a “quantum leap from our previous laboratory,” adds Zambon. The facility includes 110 individual student work stations that feature simulators designed to mimic patient care and ease the transition to the school’s patient clinics.

The center will help first- and second-year dental students develop psychomotor skills, perform intraoral scanning, and digitally design and mill restorations. Computers at each student workstation will have the same electronic health record software used in UB’s dental clinics.

“The practice of dentistry is going toward digital at lightning speed and this generation of students is primed for this because they’re so tech-savvy,” says Jane D. Brewer, chair of the Department of Restorative Dentistry.

“Our laboratory techniques for anything that is made indirectly — from crowns and bridges to dentures and implants — many of these are planned and executed digitally through scanning, design and milling.”

The second phase of the remodel will add 30 more student stations to the pre-clinic, as well as a faculty conference room, student small-group learning room and a facility for computer-aided design and manufacture. When complete this December, the pre-clinical simulation center will be twice the size of the previous facility.

In 2018, the School of Dental Medicine will begin construction of the Joseph and Stephanie Mucha Patient Welcome Center, funded by a $1 million donation from friend of the university Stephanie Mucha. The welcome center will serve as an information hub and first point of contact for new and existing patients. 

Also that year, the school will begin a $12 million renovation of its Squire Hall dental clinics.

Each year, the School of Dental Medicine provides nearly 150,000 patient care visits in its Squire Hall and Erie County Health Mall dental clinics and in its Mobile Dental Unit located in the Southern Tier.