Dental school faculty and the academic environment from 1936 to 2011: familiar features in a new context.

From its first issue in 1936 until today, no subject has been more central to the work published in the Journal of Dental Education (JDE) and to dental education itself than the dental school faculty. William Gies's vision in 1926 of the professionalization of dental educators was key to the professionalization of dental education. His focus on the need to develop these teachers as both instructors and researchers established the model by which a "dental educator" became a distinct professional, different from a dentist who happens to teach.