The DDS program provides students with the tools, technology and rich educational experience to achieve their goals and become well-rounded dental professionals.

Advanced Technology

Dental students learn in the 3M Foundation Dental Simulation Clinic, a facility designed to create a realistic clinic environment. It helps the students learn the eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity skills, techniques and procedures they’ll use to treat patients by practicing restorative procedures on simulated patients. Each workstation is equipped with a lifelike mannequin, complete with a head, shoulders, and realistic oral cavity—flexible jaws, lips and cheeks, and a full complement of teeth.

Our Advanced Simulation Clinic features 20 workstations, each with its own patient simulator, enhanced with virtual reality-based technology. Enhancements include motion-tracking systems linked to an infrared camera and a computer. Software includes on-screen textbooks, patient histories and radiographs for more than 100 clinical procedures of varying difficulty, and the ability to track, evaluate and record student performance in real-time.

Intake: Fall and Spring

Program Features

377 clinical operatories in more than 71,000 square feet of clinic space, treating about 1,000 new patients each month

Clinical practice in a variety of outreach sites: underserved rural/urban, hospital, Indian Health Service, mobile dental van, and others

Summer research fellowships under the mentorship of world renowned research faculty

Team based care: dental, dental hygiene, and dental therapy students practice together to deliver comprehensive care to patients

Case-based learning that integrates basic, clinical, and behavioral sciences

Worldwide reputation for research contributions to the understanding of fluoride and decay prevention, microbiology and orofacial genetic anomalies, periodontal disease prevention, pain control, oral cancer, and effective care delivery

Our students are professional leaders. First in the nation to become full members of their state professional association, our students comprise the 8th District Dental Society of the Minnesota Dental Association (MDA). They participate on association committees and its Board of Trustees, and have voting privileges at the MDA House of Delegates.

Student exchange programs with schools in Denmark, Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands

Faculty that reflects a mix of tenure and tenure-track clinical specialists, along with well-respected adjunct faculty