Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD)

WesternU’s College of Dental Medicine is committed to establishing a quality, innovative program that prepares you for success, whether in private practice, community service, research or academics. Our four-year program will allow you to learn with an integrated team of health professionals in a part of the country with a wealth of clinical opportunities. Consistent with the WesternU philosophy, the faculty of the College of Dental Medicine will actively partner with you to help you become a humane, sensitive, and technically competent healthcare professional.

As a student in our program, you can take advantage of a quality, innovative curriculum based on the “best practices” in health-care education today. You will use new facilities with advanced educational and clinical technology within an established health sciences university dedicated to providing student-centered, interprofessional health education. Dental students of the College of Dental Medicine will embark on a journey with the enthusiastic support of administration, faculty and staff.

Western University of Health Sciences holds a unique place in the firmament of American higher education. Founded on a philosophy of humanistic, compassionate care – and often propelled by little more than optimism, energy and ideas – the University has over a span of 41 years evolved from one small college in a single building, with a handful of students and faculty, into the most comprehensive graduate health sciences university in the United States.

From the fallout of a decade-plus battle by California osteopathic physicians to determine their own fate emerged a small but ambitious medical college – the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific (COMP) – which sparked to life in September 1977, with a rented office in an abandoned shopping mall in Pomona, California as its home. At the helm of this fledgeling enterprise was Philip Pumerantz, PhD, a lifelong educator, onetime university professor and educational consultant recruited from the American Osteopathic Association, where he was Director of Education, to become president of the new college. With the help of his wife, Harriet, the couple’s three children, and a small but energetic cadre of California osteopathic physicians, Dr Pumerantz spent the next year recruiting students, faculty and staff, and remodelling empty storefronts for educational use, so that in September 1978 COMP could welcome its inaugural class – 36 souls in all.