Forging Ahead: UAB's Strategic Plan 2024-2028Forging Ahead, UAB's five-year strategic plan for 2024-2028, builds on the success of past plans and outlines the university's mission, vision, shared values, peers, foundations and pillars, as well as outlines institutional goals and strategies to achieve them, and measurements of success.
Collaborate: Work as a team for the greater good.
Act with integrity: Be accountable and always do the right thing.
Respect all: Champion diversity and opportunities for all, with civility.
Excel: Innovate and strive for excellence in everything we do.
UAB enriches society and improves health and well-being through transformational educational experiences, groundbreaking research, innovation and entrepreneurship, community engagement, and world-class patient care while serving our UAB, local and global communities.
UAB is a world-class research university and academic health system committed to understanding and improving the human experience.
With UAB’s adoption of Forging Ahead, each school/college/unit is now creating localized strategic plans to advance each area of the enterprise, guided by the big-picture direction provided by Forging Ahead. As those efforts continue – informed by Forging Ahead – we are reminded to maintain a focus on the institution’s refreshed vision, mission and values. Ultimately, we exist to improve the lives of people – at UAB, across Birmingham and Alabama, and around the world.
Following suit with Forging Ahead, our school has adopted an inclusive process to leverage the knowledge and expertise of our most valuable resource – our people. Input and feedback will be sought at various stages throughout the process.
This process is intended to result in a big-picture, overarching school wide strategic plan. That an entity or initiative is not directly named in the school’s ultimate plan, does not mean it is not critically important. We look forward to individual departments developing their own complementary plans that focus on these and other important department-level initiatives.
Lead: Dr. Nico Geurs Members: Dr. Chin-Chuan Fu, Dr. Ashraf F. Fouad, Dr. Mia Geisinger, Dr. Gregg Gilbert, Dr. Janice Jackson, Dr. Chung Kau, Dr. Patrick Louis, Lynne Jarreau, and David Wilson
Lead: Dr. Ramzi Abou-Arraj Members: Dr. Peter Smith, Dr. Daniel Givan, Dr. Carly Timmons McKenzie, Dr. Christine Blass, Dr. Chin-Chuan Fu, Dr. Nathaniel Lawson, Dr. Christos Vlachos, Dr. Elyse Dengler, Dr. Stephen Mitchell, Dr. Mia Geisinger, Dr. Raquel Mazer, Dr. Shandra Coble, Dr. Po-Hsu Chen, Sarah Connor, Monyca Smith, Lynne Jarreau, Maysara Nassar, and Helen Tamara Gibson
Lead: Dr. Amjad Javed Members: Dr. Gregg Gilbert, Dr. Joana Cunha-Cruz, Dr. Ping Zhang, Dr. Ejvis Lamani, Dr. Nathaniel Lawson, Dr. Hope Amm, Dr. Quamarul Hassan, Dr. Farahnaz Fahimipour, Dr. Ashraf F. Fouad, Dr. Kyounga Cheon, Dr. Mohamed Khass, Dr. Chung How Kau, Kelsey Hoggatt, Christopher Washington, Kayla McCullough, Edwin Rojas, and Caris Smith
Leads: Dr. Carly Timmons McKenzie and Dr. Nico Geurs Members: Scott Huffman, Dr. Janice Jackson, Dr. Raquel Mazer, Dr. Michelle Seidenfaden, Ann Marie Karaki, Dr. Snigdha Gummadi, Theresa Creel, Lynne Jarreau, Wendy Scripps, Kelly Stinson, Symone Stewart, and Zoe Kardis
Lead: Dr. Daniel Givan Members: Dr. Ashraf F. Fouad, Dr. Chin-Chuan Fu, Dr. Mia Geisinger, Dr. Jeff Hill, Dr. Chung Kau, Dr. Maninder Kaur, Dr. Emerson Martins, Dr. Raquel Mazer, Dr. Ping Zhang, Kathleen Diveley, Joshua Hill-Sales, Decarlos Wright, Robert Hubbard, Lynne Jarreau, Andretta Johnson, Wanda Yvnette Marshall, Angela Rembert, Jacquiselyn Story, Catherine Tilford, Alan Camp, and Chase Feagin
Lead: David Wilson Members: Scott Huffman and Dr. Mia GeisingerDear SOD Family, As we near the end of our existing strategic plan, this offers us an opportunity to celebrate our 2023-2024 accomplishments and reflect upon its final stages. Last year was one for the record books. Our D.M.D. program continued to grow and UAB International Dentist Program kept expanding its worldwide reach. More than 1,400 people attended our two-day Dental Hygiene Symposium in person in August, making it one of the largest hybrid dental meetings in Alabama, and Alumni Weekend again hit an all-time high in attendees and vendors. The 19th annual Scholars Symposium saw a record high number of submissions (111), a nearly 40 percent increase over the prior year’s event, and the School of Dentistry was well represented at 2024 IADR/AADOCR General Session and in IADR leadership. The National Dental Practice-Based Research Network (PBRN) held its 2024 Annual Meeting in April, hosting practitioners from its eight-state South Central Region right here in Birmingham. This underscores our expanding leadership, influence, and impact locally and globally.
A few more highlights:
Research
Our NIDCR ranking has increased to #11, with total NIH funding of nearly 5.5M. Established in 2007, our DART Program remains at the national forefront of training future dental academicians and notably, GC-CODED was among 25 University-Wide Interdisciplinary Research Centers selected for UWIRC status and associated institutional funding in FY 2025. These cornerstones of our research enterprise help develop faculty and trainees and set the stage for future innovation.
Patient Care
The patient care team has worked to improve the experience for our patients who attended 65,000+ appointments last year. We held a ribbon cutting for our new first floor clinic last summer and our team expanded comprehensive and limited care services to benefit patients and students.
Engagement
The school is actively involved in partnerships that engage communities and improve oral health for people across our state and beyond. With more than 15 active student organizations, our students have been busier than ever serving those in need. Our community-based patient care efforts include the first-of-its-kind satellite clinic we opened in Dothan this spring, as well as the oral cancer screenings and numerous oral health information fairs we attended locally and statewide.
And within the educational arena, we launched a new Rural Dental Scholars program and welcomed our first Blaze to DMD program cohort as part of our D1 class last year. These are important pathway programs with the long-range goal for students to go into practice in areas of the state that have a greater need for dental services, such as rural and minority communities.
Education
Over the last several years, we have supported the UAB master plan through enrollment growth and competitive recruitment strategies. Our classes continue to grow and become more diverse. In fact, we were thrilled to meet our newest class – the Class of 2028 – for whom we hosted a welcome day in April.
Ultimately, our job is to prepare students for successful careers that meet societal needs. This is why we celebrated our award-winning students in June with the return of Honors Convocation, and we are so proud of our newly minted D.M.D. graduates, postdoctoral students who completed their residencies, and students who earned graduate degrees last year.
Of course, one of the best moments of the 2023-2024 academic year was celebrating the school’s 75th anniversary on October 18. Our anniversary week was marked with activities for faculty, staff, students, and alumni alike. It was truly a memorable occasion. Highlights of the full anniversary year can be found in this newly released 2023 year in review.
We have achieved a great deal throughout the course of our strategic plan, but there is more to be accomplished. As we kick off our fall term activities, we can look forward to many opportunities going forward. These include continuing to evolve our curriculum and facilities to meet our education and patient care goals. Teams have already been busy preparing for this year with a focus on innovation and building critical infrastructure. We are also getting set to welcome students to our state-of-the-art UAB Dentistry Dothan clinic, as rotations will begin later this month. This will provide valuable exposure to practice in other parts of our state.
And with the launch of UAB Forging Ahead, our school will refresh our own strategic plan over the coming months to align with the university’s new strategy and set the direction for our future. Here’s to a successful future.
Go Blazers!
Nicolaas Geurs, D.D.S., M.S.
Dean
