Dental School Cuts Shifts to Medical Field

Possibly the last group of Dental School students for some time to come have gained access to the medical profession through the side door of dentistry.

Effective this spring, the University's eight year old School of Dentistry in cooperation with the Medical School, will no longer permit graduates to transfer into the third year of medicine, except for extraordinary reasons, Dean Roy O. Greep of the Dental School reported yesterday.

Dean Greep, in implementing a policy established four years ago, pointed out that the Dental School has so far lost almost half of its first 97 graduates to the Medical School and eventually to medical practices not connected with dentistry.

Transfer Privilege Cancelled

In the past, dental school graduates, who take their first two years as regular medical students, have been permitted an automatic transfer into the third year. Now, any student desiring to transfer will have to face a special "Committee on Continued Professional Study in Medicine and Dentistry" composed of three dental professors and three Medical School professors.

So far, only one student has bothered to apply to this committee, and he has "withdrawn" his application. In the past, almost an entire class of 16 on occasion used the transfer privilege.

Behind the ruling is a desire to keep dental students in the profession. No regulation has been published regarding transfers to medical schools other than the University's but for these a recommendation from the Dental School administration would still be necessary, It is expected such recommendations would only rarely be given.

"The idea in granting Dental School graduates the privilege of automatic transfer was that they would further prepare themselves for dentistry, but not one has ever done so," Dean Greep pointed out yesterday.

What future dental students who wish to transfer will have to do is make their intentions very clear at the beginning that they intend to do advanced work in medicine, Dean Greep stated.

"This is a peculiar situation here," he continued. "One faster in the number of transfers we have had in the past is that the medical school is probably the means of medicine. That makes it difficult competition for a small, young school.