Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Texas A&M University College of Dentistry Opens New Clinic and Education Building

  • 02/03/20

DALLAS – The Texas A&M University College of Dentistry dedicated its new Clinic and Education Building in January. The clinic began seeing patients earlier this month.

The 160,000-square-foot, nine-story building will give underserved patients greater access to dental care and has enabled the college to shift its curriculum from a traditional discipline-based approach to a team-based “whole health” model.

Texas A&M Dentistry Clinic

Photo courtesy of BRW Architects

The first stand-alone building built for the college since 1950, the Clinic and Education Building features nearly 300 dental chair stations ranging from general practice to prosthodontics and implant surgery, each equipped with the latest technology. It also includes specialized clinics, clinical support spaces, faculty areas, classrooms and study spaces. Dedicated patient parking is available on the building’s first three floors.

The new building will allow the college to increase patient visits — currently numbering approximately 100,000 per year — by as much as 40 percent and gives it the capacity to expand enrollment to meet the demand for dental care providers in underserved parts of the state.

It also has facilitated an overhaul of the college’s curriculum to a team-based approach that is patient-centered and reflects the more collaborative learning style of today’s students. This group practice model will expose students to numerous specialists and foster students’ engagement in their work, with each other, and with their patients, helping prepare them to work in whichever practice model they ultimately choose.

Kahler Slater of Milwaukee led the programming, planning and design for the new facility, partnering with architect of record BRW Architects of Dallas.

Featured

  • Florida District Completes Construction on New Leadership Institute

    Pinellas County Schools near Tampa, Fla., recently announced that construction is complete on the new Dr. Michael A. Grego Leadership Institute, according to a news release. The district partnered with Rowe Architects for the project’s design and with Skanska for construction services.

  • Designing for Every Mind

    Learning environments have the power to shape not just what students know, but who they become. When a school is designed with genuine empathy—for the full range of ways students think, sense, and engage with the world—it becomes more than a building. It becomes a catalyst for growth, confidence, and belonging. That is the animating idea behind neurodiverse design, and it is one that is transforming how more architects and designers are thinking about school design.

  • Architectural Power for the Modern Campus Landscape

    For generations, an outdoor classroom only required a textbook and a patch of grass. Today, not only has the laptop replaced the printed pages, the rise of agile learning has turned campuses into study halls with students listening to lectures and researching topics from quads, gardens, and plazas. The challenge for architects and facility managers is to provide connectivity without cluttering the landscape with visual eyesores or creating safety hazards with extension cords.

  • Moline-Coal Valley School District to Consolidate Two Schools into New Facility

    The Moline-Coal Valley School District in Moline, Ill., recently broke ground on a new elementary school that will consolidate the students and staff from two existing schools, according to local news. Robert Ontiveros Elementary School will serve as the new home for Lincoln-Irving Elementary School and Willard Elementary School.