Interest in dentistry as part of a well-rounded program of professional training in the field of medicine and health education within the denomination was reflected in the charter of the College of Medical Evangelists (now Loma Linda University), which proposed the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery. However, nothing was done about it. In the 1932 spring meeting of the General Conference Executive Committee it was voted to “explore the feasibility of establishing a school of dentistry in connection with the school of medicine of the College of Medical Evangelists, or of making a group arrangement with some standard dental college where our young people can have the safeguards of Christian home life.”
To explore the possibilities, a committee of five was appointed, one of whom was Dr. J. Russell Mitchell, a practicing dentist on the faculty of the Atlanta (Georgia) Southern Dental College. On the recommendation of this committee to the Autumn Council in 1933, the General Conference Department of Education made arrangements with the Atlanta Southern Dental College to accept Seventh-day Adventist students and to grant them Sabbath privileges. The first group of SDA students was admitted in the fall of 1934.
In a 1938 meeting of the College of Medical Evangelists constituency, the feasibility of establishing a dental school was discussed, and later studies were made. Dr. Herbert G. Childs, chair of the Department of Stomatology of the medical school, in 1939 presented a report on the advisability of establishing an SDA dental school, using the existing facilities of the medical school, offering the first two years of basic sciences in Loma Linda and the two years of clinical training in Los Angeles. On seeing a brochure describing this plan, Dr. M. Webster Prince, an SDA layperson who was a practicing dentist in Detroit and a member of the Council on Dental Education (the accrediting agency for all dental schools within the United States), pointed out that the proposed plan was not in keeping with the council’s policies on four major points: Dental education should be a university discipline, taught entirely on one campus, by a highly selective faculty, with preference given to well-qualified full-time teachers, and operated on an eleemosynary basis, with autonomy and adequate financial support. This evaluation resulted in discarding the then-existing plans.
When Atlanta Southern Dental College found it necessary to affiliate with Emory University, the effect was to rule out the SDA arrangement with the school. Serious study was undertaken again in 1944 for the establishment of an SDA dental school. In 1947 the General Conference Committee terminated the agreement with the Atlanta Southern Dental College and authorized the sale of the denominationally owned student home.
Four years later the General Conference Executive Committee launched new plans that resulted eventually in the establishment of an SDA School of Dentistry. The first class graduated in 1957. Presently, the total student body consists of 80 students enrolled in each year of the dental curriculum, 40 students each year in the dental hygiene curriculum, and 60 graduate dentists are enrolled in nine postdoctoral programs of dental specialty education.
The original physical plant (Prince Hall) was enlarged and remodeled in 1976, approximately doubling the size of the original structure.
The School of Dentistry offers more than 135 continuing education courses each year to practicing dentists. More than 6,000 enrollees each year include dentists from 15 or more countries outside the United States. See Loma Linda University .