Touro opening dental school in Westchester
The first acceptance letters are being sent to prospective students in the first graduating class at Touro College of Dental Medicine at New York Medical College, which will open this summer in a former IBM office building in Hawthorne next to the medical college”™s Grasslands campus in Valhalla.
The 100,000-square-foot facility, half of which will house a 132-chair community dental clinic staffed by faculty and students, will be the fifth school for health care professionals operated in New York by Touro College and University System, a fast-expanding, nonprofit Jewish institution headquartered in Manhattan. Touro in 2011 acquired New York Medical College from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York in a $60 million deal.
With its first class of an anticipated 110 students entering this summer, the dental school at 19 Skyline Drive will be the fifth operating in New York state and the first to open in the state since 1968, when the Stony Brook University School of Dental Medicine joined the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine as the state”™s only publicly funded schools training dentists. In the metropolitan area, it will vie for students with Stony Brook and two private institutions, Columbia University College of Dental Medicine and New York University College of Dentistry, as well as with the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine in Newark.
New York”™s statewide population has increased by 4.5 million people in the nearly half a century since the last dentistry school opened, according to Touro officials.
In deciding to start a new dental school, Touro officials “saw synergy with our overall health sciences system,” said Dr. Alan Kadish, president of Touro College and University System, in a phone interview with the Business Journal. “We saw a nationwide need for dentists. We saw demand by undergraduates” for dentistry programs. And Touro officials saw a need for more dental care in rural areas and underserved communities in this region, Kadish said.
“With dental health care as the foothold of good overall health care, it is important that this area of professional health care education continues to grow,” Kadish said in Touro”™s announcement of the opening. “Fortunately, the dental school”™s location on the New York Medical College campus will create invaluable opportunities for interdisciplinary training.”
Kadish said New York Medical College this fall will extend Sunshine Cottage Road on the Grasslands campus to connect the Skyline Drive facility with the main campus.
New York Medical College three years ago paid $17.5 million to acquire the vacant 5-story, approximately 248,000-square-foot office building at 19 Skyline Drive in Mack-Cali Realty Corp.”™s Mid-Westchester Executive Park. Kadish said 100,000 square feet of space will be used for the dental school, with 25,000 square feet of shared facilities and the remaining office space used by the medical school.
Touro will spend an estimated $25 million to $30 million for property acquisition and construction. The dental school”™s community clinic space will not be built until the third year of operation, Kadish noted. In addition to those costs, Touro”™s start-up expenses for the dental school will total $10 million to $20 million, he said.
Touro in February was awarded a matching grant of $2,075,000 for the dental school project from the state Higher Education Capital Matching Grant Program. The program is administered by the Dormitory Authority State of New York, which in 2014 approved approximately $32.5 million in bond financing for Touro primarily for the Skyline Drive purchase and building renovations project.
Kadish said the school will offer a 4-year pre-doctoral program for students leading to the DDS degree, a continuing education program for practicing dentists, and the community clinic. He said Touro has an agreement with Open Door Family Medical Centers, the community health care provider based in Ossining, to supply additional dental care to Open Door”™s patients in Westchester and Putnam counties.
Kadish said he community clinic service might be extended to northern Bronx residents “depending on need and practicality.” Touro is looking to eventually open satellite clinics in the area, he said.
First-year tuition and fees at the new dental school in Westchester will total $61,500; with room and board and other living expenses, a student”™s costs are expected to total about $92,000, according to the Touro College of Dental Medicine website.
By comparison, first-year tuition and fees at the Columbia University dental school total $84,480, and a student”™s total expenses for the academic year amount to nearly $107,000. At the state”™s Stony Brook dental school, total first-year costs for a New York resident amount to approximately $79,400, while non-resident dental students can expect to pay about $109,400.
Touro officials said the dental college also will conduct research projects on subjects that include how to reduce the cost of effective dental care and translational research that applies scientific discoveries to produce new devices and treatments for patients.
Touro has named Dr. Jay P. Goldsmith as the dental school”™s founding dean. An oral and maxillofacial surgeon, Goldsmith is a former professor, program director and deputy chief in New York Medical College”™s Department of Dental Medicine.
Dr. Edward F. Farkas has been named senior associate dean for clinical affairs and chairman of dentistry at the dental college. Touro officials said Farkas, who practices general dentistry in New York City, “has been involved with the founding of the dental school from the outset.”
Dr. Edward C. Halperin, chancellor and CEO of New York Medical College, in the announcement said the dental school”™s location at the medical college campus “gives the school and its students a competitive edge.”
At full capacity, the dental school will enroll about 440 students. Kadish said the school received 2,300 applications from students in January, from which 500 students were selected for interviews. Well under half of the applicants are New York state residents, he said.