Teaming Up Nationally

At three in the morning, Director of Continuing Dental Education Janice Gibbs-Reed had an idea to ensure her office’s survival during the pandemic. Rather than struggling individually, what if alike offices joined powers for their programs?

She proposed this to the Association for Continuing Dental Education (ACDE) made up of about 50 American and Canadian dental schools. The association came on board, paving the way for what became the ACDE webinar series. In 2021, the series started with 31 schools contributing two volunteer faculty speakers a year to the program. The schools collectively market the webinars, and each school keeps its own revenue from its speakers. In 2023, the number of participating schools jumped to 37 and thousands of dentists from 55 countries attended the webinars.  

“The fact that we're reaching this many people in all of these places is phenomenal and exciting,” said Deedra Donley, ACDE’s then-president and director of continuing dental education at the University of North Carolina Adams School of Medicine.

During COVID, the series helped member schools stay connected with one another and their audiences by bringing speakers from different corners of the country when no one could travel. “It certainly has helped my office financially,” Donley added. It also has been helping continuing education offices scout speakers. Donley already invited three speakers and has six more on her list. Close to 20 schools also invited at least one speaker from the series. “The series is not to take away from the individual CE programs. It's to add to them,” she said.

The series has been beneficial to ACDE as well. She noted that new as well as former member schools have been joining the organization to partake in the series. “It's really boosting the ACDE’s recognition in the public realm.”

While the organization supports the series, Gibbs-Reed is the one that gets all the webinars up and running. “The series kind of became my child,” said Gibbs-Reed. “It's nice to have been able to bring so many schools together and see how it's grown and manifested itself into its own little thing.” They have even had two Deans present. 

No matter the day or time of the week, Gibbs-Reed helps to kick off most of the webinars and serves as ACDE host or co-host. At each event, she opens the floor to introductions. “People who come on are very engaged because they're taking courses that they want to take,” she said. "We are grateful to the faculty who have agreed to present." 

A frequent flyer in the webinar series has been Tim Gibbs from Australia. A dentist and a former senior lecturer at the University of Queensland School of Dentistry, Gibbs has taken 62 courses since the webinar series’ inception.

“The lecturers in Australia have been presenting the same material for years,” said Gibbs, who feels most of what he learned as a student, like gold and amalgam restorations as well as many theories, are outdated. “The ACDE lectures are of a high standard and help me to still stay up to date in a down-under Australian dental education system.” Gibbs particularly enjoyed RSDM Clinical Associate Professor of Diagnostic Sciences Davis Thomas’s lecture on substance abuse. “[His lecture] was about the best I have heard.”