Tufts School of Dental Medicine recently began the implementation of the new Global Service Learning Initiative, a program intended to streamline international service opportunities for students.
The initiative, organized by a committee of four dental school professors and university administrators, aims to maximize the benefits of international service learning for both students and the communities they visit by standardizing all stages of these programs, including the application process, pre-service learning, on-site practices and post-service reflection and reports, according to the dental schools Associate Dean of Global Relations, Noshir Mehta.
Before, we did not have an organized program, Mehta said. A faculty member would take two or three students to some place for about a week, theyd come back and that would be the end of that. There was no sustainability, no organization and no safety protocol that we followed on a regular basis.
Central to the initiative is the service education lecture series students must attend prior to their trip, John Morgan, a professor of Public Health and Community Service who sits on the Global Service Learning Initiative committee, said.
Its important that both the students and faculty understand what these programs are designed to do, the impact we want to have and how we can do that in an ethical manner, Morgan said.
The first half of the 10-lecture series focuses on introducing students to the overall process of global service learning. In the second half of the series, students focus on the specific community to which theyre traveling the dental treatments available to patients in the area, topics of cultural sensitivity and safety protocols, Morgan, who directs the lecture series, explained.
After the lectures, [students] have a sense of where they are going, how to keep safe when theyre there, what they can expect to see and what we expect of them, Mehta said.
Upon returning from these trips, students perform a retrospective analysis and develop seminars to share their experiences, Associate Dean of Admissions and Student Affairs Robert Kasberg said.
Students report back to the school and host seminars for the rest of the student body, so hopefully other students will gain from their experience, as well, Kasberg said.
While the school has already streamlined its existing service programs in Zambia, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, organizers plan to continue to develop and expand the reach of the Global Service Learning Initiative, Mehta explained.
We want to expand the program so that every student that wants to go abroad and gain this sort of experience is able to do so, he said.
Future service programs organized through the Global Service Learning Initiative will not be limited to third world countries, however, according to Mehta.
We want to extend these programs to other countries so students have the ability to have community service in France and Italy and those places, too, Mehta said. We have our own community here in the United States and have programs here, too.
While international service learning trips are voluntary, service learning is central to the Tufts Dental School curriculum, and all students are required to participate in national service programs, Kasberg explained.
We do have a national program where every single one of our students is exposed to service learning, he said. Theyre assigned a public service unit from the Navajo reservation in Winslow, Ariz. to rural clinics in Maine and Massachusetts and urban clinics all along the coast.
According to Kasberg, while many dental schools have international service learning trips, Tufts stands out because of its dental student exchange program.
We have a very robust student exchange program that goes hand in hand with what were doing now, Kasberg said. For instance, we have a global service learning trip that goes to the Dominican Republic. We also have a student that will go to the Dominican Republics dental school and have students from their school study here for a couple of weeks. Theyre somewhat separate, but also somewhat the same in that theyre both an effort to introduce our students to international dentistry.
Mehta added, however, that the program is meant to go beyond helping the global common good.
Its not just community service. We want these programs to serve as educational service for our students, as well, he said.
