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• “When other schools of dental medicine proceed, I want them to use Buffalo as the model of excellence in everything, saying, ‘We need to do this the Buffalo way’.”

  Michael Glick

  Dean, School of Dental Medicine

By SARA SALDI

Published: December 16, 2010

The old adage says not to tamper with something that works.

Don’t tell that to Michael Glick, dean of the School of Dental Medicine (SDM).

Glick arrived at UB one year ago and immediately saw what an extraordinary place SDM was—from the students to the staff and faculty. He saw how passionately individuals approached service, research and education.

“I was drawn to UB because of its excellent reputation and the potential for inter-professional collaboration at a developed and thriving academic health science center,” Glick said. “The high repute of UB had very much to do with the contribution emanating from research performed by individuals at the School of Dental Medicine.”

But he also noted that SDM staff and faculty often knew very little about what happened outside their departments, and that each department functioned somewhat independently—with its own goals and approaches.

It wasn’t so much that anything in the school was broken, but more that it needed a central focus and a common set of objectives to connect all the activities and the people without interfering with the good work being done. Glick also wanted to promote this good work.

And then a terrific opportunity presented itself: accreditation.

Accreditation for schools of dental medicine is a time- and labor-intensive process that takes place every seven years and includes, in part, a self-evaluation by the faculty and staff. In other words, it provides the school with a chance to take a long, hard look at itself and determine where it stands, what it stands for, and what is and isn’t working.

Fresh with the new understanding that comes with accreditation, Glick wanted to take that momentum and use it to fuel a new strategic plan for the school.

To begin the process, he chose Sandy Flash, executive director of academic and student affairs in SDM, as his facilitator and person in charge of logistics.

“One of the first things we did was send out a SWOT analysis to our faculty and staff to determine what our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats were,” Flash said.

The response to the SWOT questionnaire, completed by April 2, was excellent and from there a group of 60 “thought leaders” within the school—those with different histories who represented diversity in thought and position—were selected to speak for all areas of SDM during three, full-day Saturday sessions. Even though not everyone was paid for coming in on a day off, staff and faculty were excited to participate.

Glick chose Scott Nostaja, UB senior vice president and chief operations officer, to moderate the first two Saturday sessions. Stephanie Crowley, a graphic illustrator who specializes in illustrating these kinds of brainstorming sessions, was brought in to make visible the course and outcomes of the conversations.

The results of the SDM group work on April 24, May 15 and June 5 were delivered by Glick on Nov. 18 to a full house of SDM faculty, students and staff gathered in Allen Hall.

“The objectives of the presentation were to show everyone how well all of their hard work and feedback came together to form great results; share the school’s new core values, mission and vision; and continue planning and efforts to achieve our vision,” Glick said. “I am very proud of the work they did.”

In his presentation, Glick guided his audience through the last nine months of the work they had done together, beginning with defining what a mission is (why SDM exists) and what a vision is (where the school is headed moving forward).

Using the Crowley illustrations throughout the presentation, Glick addressed the imperatives discussed in the May 15 meeting that the strategic plan should be guided by increasing visibility, improving communications within the school (“blow our own horns”), creating a culture of trust and respect, increasing endowments and funding, and asking what the school wants to be good at.

From this, he showed three major strategic categories that aim to achieve the top imperatives: visibility, clarity and culture. Glick also presented leadership imperatives and development of faculty and staff.

Within the three categories were very specific strategies. The SDM work group wanted to increase SDM’s visibility on campus and in the community via public relations, marketing and government relations across academe and in Albany. To pursue this strategy, the dean hired a chief marketing officer to help promote the outstanding reputation of SDM. To address clarity, the group wanted to refine answers as to SDM’s products and how to maintain the momentum they have achieved through the planning process.

But the most extensive category was culture—how to nurture positive culture change. Within this category, about half the bullet points presented involved communication between colleagues, between departments, between faculty and students, and with patients.

SDM faculty and staff know that enhanced communication will improve morale, performance and patient care. To achieve this, Glick has begun facilitating five town hall meetings about issues such as outcome assessment, the impact of the UB budget on SDM and SDM competencies. He also has conducted an open meeting with dental students.

Joe Kerr, associate dean for SDM administration, explained that Glick’s goal for these town hall meetings is “not to hear the same questions twice,” Kerr says. “The dean wants questions answered and issues resolved before the next meeting.”

Glick then told those attending the meeting a story of having seen a broadcast about NASA where a janitor was asked what his job was. He replied, “To put a man on the moon.”

Resting on the new core values of integrity, compassion and innovation, Glick introduced the new vision: defining excellence in global health. The term “global” is used in two ways: global as in the international sense and global as in systemic health.

Glick wants his staff and students to ask themselves how they can codify excellence into every aspect of their work.

And he wants this “Buffalo effect” to be acknowledged by dental schools all over the world.

“When other schools of dental medicine proceed, I want them to use Buffalo as the model of excellence in everything, saying, ‘We need to do this the Buffalo way’,” Glick told those attending the meeting.

And then he stepped back and said, “What do you think.”

The audience in Allen Hall burst into applause, some shouting “Well done!”