From Kirksville to St. Louis, A.T. Still University is shaping the future of dentistry

Photos by Ella Manthey

A healthy smile can change more than someone’s appearance: It can restore confidence, make it easier to communicate, improve quality of life, and open doors that may have felt closed for years.

At A.T. Still University’s Missouri School of Dentistry & Oral Health (ATSU-MOSDOH), those possibilities are at the heart of an educational model that connects advanced dental training with a commitment to serving people who might otherwise struggle to access care.

The university’s approach brings together two seemingly different priorities: preparing students to practice the latest advancements in dentistry and ensuring patients receive compassionate, comprehensive care regardless of their circumstances.

It’s a mission that stretches from Kirksville, Missouri, where dental students begin their education, to the university’s St. Louis Dental Education and Oral Health Center, where they spend their final two years treating patients in a real-world clinical environment.

Now, as Kneka P. Smith, EdD, MPH, steps into her role as the next dean of ATSU-MOSDOH, the school is entering another chapter in that mission, one built on the foundation of whole-person health care, community partnerships, and a growing commitment to innovation.

“Oral health is part of whole-person health care,” Smith says.

It’s a philosophy that becomes tangible throughout the St. Louis center, where students learn not just to treat more than individual dental problems, but also to understand the people behind them.

A Foundation Built on Whole-Person Health Care

Founded more than 130 years ago in Kirksville, A.T. Still University has a longstanding connection to Missouri and a history rooted in the belief that health care should address the whole person.

That philosophy traces back to the university’s namesake, Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, who established the osteopathic medical profession and recognized the importance of considering the body’s interconnected systems. His approach also included providing dental care to patients in rural Missouri, some of whom traveled hundreds of miles to receive treatment.

Today, ATSU continues that commitment through its health sciences programs and campuses in Missouri, Arizona, and California.

For dental students enrolled in ATSU-MOSDOH, the four-year program begins with two years in Kirksville. Students build their foundational knowledge through classroom instruction, biomedical sciences, and extensive simulation-based training before transitioning to St. Louis for their third and fourth years.

The St. Louis center, which opened more than a decade ago, operates in partnership with Affinia Healthcare, a federally qualified health center. The partnership allows students to gain extensive clinical experience while helping expand access to dental services for the surrounding community.

Approximately 150 students train at the St. Louis facility, rotating through general dentistry and specialty care areas that include oral surgery, pediatric dentistry, endodontics, and periodontics.

The experience is designed to prepare graduates to enter the profession with the skills necessary to care for patients across a wide range of needs.

“We’re really here to serve the St. Louis community regardless of what a patient’s background is or what their priorities have been,” Smith says. “What they want to do today and going forward.”

That commitment is reflected in the center’s patient population. Some arrive seeking preventive care or routine treatment. Others come with extensive dental needs, chronic health conditions, developmental disabilities, or years of untreated dental problems.

The clinic also provides urgent care for people who don’t have an established dental home. Patients can come in during designated morning and afternoon sessions to receive treatment from faculty dentists working alongside dental students.

For some, that means relief from significant pain or infection. For others, it means receiving treatment that can restore their ability to eat comfortably, speak clearly, and smile with confidence.

The center also offers specialized care for children and adults with developmental disabilities, recognizing that traditional dental settings can present significant challenges for some patients and their caregivers.

In particularly complex cases, the university works with BJC Healthcare to provide access to operating room facilities. This allows patients who may not otherwise be able to tolerate dental treatment in a traditional clinical setting to receive necessary care.

The breadth of these experiences is intentional.

“We recognize people come from all different backgrounds and different abilities and priorities,” Smith says. “We’re really here to serve the St. Louis community regardless of what a patient’s background is.”

For students, that means learning to recognize that good dentistry requires more than technical proficiency: It also requires communication, patience, empathy, and an understanding of the circumstances that influence a patient’s ability to receive care.

Learning Dentistry by Practicing Dentistry

For Bryn Arwood, a dental student who came to ATSU-MOSDOH after working as a dental assistant, the transition from Kirksville to St. Louis has provided an opportunity to put years of classroom and simulation training into practice.

Originally from Warrenville, Illinois, Arwood applied to several dental schools before receiving a call from ATSU-MOSDOH. An encouraging admissions interview and connections with future classmates helped her make the decision to choose ATSU.

After two years in Kirksville, the move to St. Louis marked a significant shift in the educational experience.

“I think that it really feels like dentistry,” Arwood says. “While you’re in school and you’re learning and everything, you are responsible for your own patient base, taking care of them, getting their full treatment plan, scheduling them, and doing everything. It really prepares you for being a dentist.”

Rather than focusing on isolated procedures, students take responsibility for managing patients’ comprehensive treatment plans. They learn to evaluate needs, communicate options, coordinate appointments, and determine the appropriate course of care.

That experience is particularly valuable given the diversity of patients served at the St. Louis center.

“We focus a lot on social determinants of health here at MOSDOH and understanding the different perspectives of different people and what your patients may need,” Arwood says.

From a provider’s standpoint, she says, the experience helps students strengthen their ability to communicate, assess, educate, and make decisions based on what is best for each individual patient.

“We really get to focus on comprehensive care and treating the whole person,” Arwood says.

The educational journey in Kirksville provides an important foundation for that work.

During their first two years, students spend considerable time in simulation clinics, practicing procedures on realistic mannequin systems before treating patients. The facilities include individual workstations, mobile mannequin heads, imaging equipment, and overhead screens that allow students to follow instructors’ demonstrations.

Students learn everything from using dental handpieces and preparing crowns to taking impressions and X-rays. Arwood estimates that students spend approximately half their time during those first two years in simulation training.

They also gain early patient experience through community health settings, including Northeast Missouri Health Council and other opportunities in the Kirksville area.

That combination of a close-knit academic environment and early exposure to patient care helps students develop confidence before transitioning to the larger and more diverse St. Louis clinical setting.

Arwood also points to the relationships students build throughout the program as an important part of the experience: While students are physically separated during their first two years in Kirksville and final two years in St. Louis, she says the sense of community remains strong.

“There’s a true camaraderie between your classes that people might not experience at other dental schools,” she says. “We’re all very close here, and that can help with lending a helping hand when somebody needs it or being a shoulder to lean on.”

It’s an environment that reinforces another important part of dental education: learning from one another while preparing to serve others.

Smiles that Move Lives Forward

For Dr. Herbert P. Silva, DMD, FICD, assistant professor and director of the university’s Comprehensive Care Unit (CCU), that connection between education and service is especially meaningful.

A former Marine Corps helicopter pilot who served in Vietnam, Silva brings his military background and decades of experience in dentistry to his work with students and patients.

His commitment to serving others helped inspire ATSU-MOSDOH’s Smiles for Veterans program, which provides comprehensive dental treatment to veterans who might otherwise face significant barriers to care.

The program is about more than providing a cleaning or a quick procedure: Its goal is to help veterans regain their smiles through the treatment they need, whether that involves extensive restorative work, dentures, or other complex dental procedures.

Silva and his colleagues volunteer their time, including working two Saturdays each month, to help make the program possible. Students participate in the experience as part of their clinical education, building relationships with veterans and developing treatment plans that address their individual needs.

Silva sees a direct connection between his military experience and the commitment he hopes to instill in future dentists. “We committed to taking care of the troops,” he says. “That became ingrained.”

That sense of responsibility continues in the clinic, where Silva encourages students to recognize that they are advocates for their patients.

“The students are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (in years three and four of school), but they’re just heading into the tunnel with humans,” Silva says. “All of the puzzles of treating that human, the needs of that particular patient, we try to ingrain and teach to our students a commitment that they’re an advocate for their patient.”

For many veterans, dental problems have consequences that extend well beyond their mouths. Years without treatment can affect nutrition, speech, confidence, and the ability to participate comfortably in everyday life.

Silva recalls one veteran whose mother barely recognized him after the university helped restore his teeth and smile. In another instance, a veteran’s daughter remarked that her father looked like himself again and that she could understand him when he spoke to her.

Silva also remembers treating an 84-year-old Air Force veteran who had been without teeth for decades. After months of treatment, the veteran was able to smile again.

When Silva asked how he felt about his new smile, the veteran responded with a joke about his renewed social life. For Silva, the humor was part of a much bigger transformation.

“There’s confidence, there’s people getting their job, people interacting with their family,” he says. “They can interact with their grandchildren. ‘Oh, I want my grandchildren to see me the way I used to be, to be able to smile.'”

Those are the outcomes that can be difficult to quantify but that make the work especially meaningful. And the impact extends beyond veterans. Silva estimates that most patients served at the St. Louis center are civilians, with people traveling from Missouri and neighboring states to receive care.

The university also works to connect students with opportunities to serve older adults and people with special needs, populations that may face additional obstacles when seeking dental treatment.

For Silva, preparing students to carry that commitment into their careers is just as important as the treatment provided inside the clinic.

The university has graduated multiple classes of dentists who now practice throughout the country. Silva says he especially enjoys hearing from former students who share stories of treating veterans in their own communities.

His encouragement to them is simple: Continue the work, find opportunities to help, support local programs, and make a difference for the people who need it.

It’s a philosophy of paying it forward that connects the university’s clinical work with its larger educational mission.

Bringing the Future of Dentistry into the Classroom

While compassion and accessibility remain central to the university’s mission, ATSU-MOSDOH is also investing in technology that is changing how dental care is delivered.

At the St. Louis center, digital dentistry is integrated into the curriculum, giving students hands-on experience with equipment and techniques increasingly used in modern dental practices.

Leading that effort is Dr. Akshay Vij, director of aesthetic and digital dentistry, who joined the university after completing postgraduate training at UCLA and working in private practice.

When Vij became the university’s digital dentistry director in 2017, the position was the first of its kind in the country. At the time, digital dentistry was still emerging: The technology was expensive, required significant investment, and was primarily available in a relatively small percentage of private practices. It had not yet become a standard part of dental education.

Vij saw an opportunity to change that. His goal was to move beyond introducing students to digital dentistry as an emerging specialty and instead make the technology an integral part of their education from the beginning.

“We want to teach our students cutting-edge modern dentistry, something that they would be expected to do as they graduate,” Vij says. “We want to make them ready for the private practice world or whichever world they want to exist in after this.”

Today, the program is nearly 100 percent digital, with students gaining experience using digital scanners, milling machines, and 3D printers.

That investment benefits both students and patients. Consider the process of receiving a dental crown: Traditionally, a dentist prepares the tooth, takes a physical impression, and sends the impression to an outside laboratory. The finished crown is then returned to the dental practice, a process that can take weeks.

At ATSU-MOSDOH, students can learn to design and manufacture crowns in-house with faculty guidance. Digital scanners capture three-dimensional images of a patient’s mouth, eliminating the need for traditional impression material. The images are transferred to a computer, where the crown is designed to fit the patient’s needs. Milling machines then manufacture the restoration.

What once could take two weeks can now take approximately two hours, Vij says. In some cases, patients can receive their finished crowns the same day or within a few days.

“It is much more accurate, much more repeatable, and mostly, patient acceptance is super high because it’s much more comfortable,” Vij says. “They’re not having to take time off of work, they’re not having to find a babysitter, they don’t have to get multiple shots.”

The technology can also make treatment more comfortable for patients who have difficulty tolerating traditional impressions. But the benefits aren’t limited to convenience. Vij says digital technology allows the university to provide care at a lower cost while maintaining — and in some cases improving — the quality of treatment.

“It’s not that we provide affordable care, we actually provide the highest quality of care at an affordable price,” he says. “Because of the school’s mission, we’ve been able to marry these two concepts together.”

Making that transition required more than purchasing equipment. The university had to invest in faculty development, staff training, curriculum design, and the technology infrastructure needed to support a fully integrated digital dentistry program.

Vij says one of his proudest accomplishments has been embedding the technology so deeply into the curriculum that students don’t view it as something extra they must learn. Instead, it’s simply part of how they learn dentistry.

“We didn’t want these students to be exposed to digital dentistry after they graduate,” he says. “They should be digital natives first.”

That means students become familiar with the technology throughout their education, developing the skills and confidence to use it in their future practices.

Vij believes the university was nearly a decade ahead of the curve in recognizing the importance of digital dentistry in dental education.

“When our graduates go out and they sometimes go to specialization, different schools, they realize, ‘Oh wow, what they’re learning now, we learned 10 years ago,'” Vij says.

The university’s early investment has also helped establish a model that other dental schools are now working to adopt. For Vij, the opportunity to introduce an entirely new approach to dental education has been one of the most rewarding parts of his career.

“Not only do we provide access to care, we provide access to excellent care,” Vij says.

A Growing Investment in St. Louis

The university’s impact on the region is also reflected in its plans to expand the St. Louis Dental Education and Oral Health Center in the Peabody–Darst–Webbe neighborhood.

The first two floors of the facility house the primary clinical operations, with patient treatment areas, specialty services, and support spaces. The university is now preparing to build out the unfinished third floor, adding dozens of additional dental chairs, faculty, and staff capacity, as well as a stunning view of the Gateway Arch and Downtown St. Louis.

The expansion is intended to accommodate an increase of 21 students per incoming class. Once those larger classes progress through the program, the university anticipates graduating an additional 42 dentists.

Designs for the third-floor project have been completed, with the next phase of planning and development expected to begin in 2027. The additional space will allow the university to expand its clinical capacity and provide more services to the community.

It’s a significant opportunity for a program whose educational model depends on connecting students with real patients and a wide range of clinical experiences.

The center’s location also makes it an important resource for the region, providing convenient access to dental services while strengthening the university’s relationship with the surrounding community.

And those relationships extend beyond the walls of the clinic. The university welcomes patients who speak a variety of languages, working with interpreters and multilingual staff to help ensure people can communicate their needs and understand their treatment options.

Vij says it’s common for the clinic to serve patients speaking approximately 15 languages at any given time. The university has also invested in translated educational materials and forms to make care more accessible.

As Smith, Arwood, Silva, and Vij each demonstrate in their own work, access to care means more than making an appointment available: It means creating an environment where patients feel welcome, understood, and confident that their needs will be taken seriously.

Preparing Dentists to Make a Difference

Across the university’s programs, one theme consistently emerges: the importance of preparing students to see the person, not just the procedure.

For Smith, that philosophy is especially meaningful, given her childhood growing up in a small rural community with limited access to health care.

“Students are serving in both rural and urban communities now and will do that later,” she says. “For me, it’s fulfilling some of those childhood needs that our family and our community needed, through almost 100 graduates a year.”

At the St. Louis center, students encounter patients whose experiences, circumstances, and health needs may be very different from their own. They learn to adapt their communication, consider social determinants of health, and develop treatment plans that account for the whole person.

They also see firsthand how access to preventive care can change a patient’s experience with dentistry. For patients who have spent years avoiding treatment because of anxiety, cost, or previous negative experiences, a compassionate provider can help create a different path forward.

And for the students who graduate from ATSU-MOSDOH, those lessons can shape decades of future patient care.

Smith describes that opportunity as one of the most rewarding parts of the university’s work: preparing graduates who will take what they’ve learned and bring it to the communities where they choose to practice.

“We’re dedicated that they’re going to walk out of here and be able to treat patients with all different kinds of needs,” Smith says. “Not just their dental needs, but who they are as people, the challenges that they’ve faced.”

At its core, that’s what connects the university’s history in Kirksville with its growing presence in St. Louis.

From the foundational skills students develop in simulation clinics to the advanced technology they learn to use in patient care, from comprehensive treatment for veterans to specialized services for people with complex needs, A.T. Still University is working to ensure that the next generation of dentists is prepared for more than the technical demands of the profession.

“We’ve built it here so that they really can see people from all different walks of life,” Smith says. “Those who are in pain and struggling and those who are on a pathway to prevention, those who need complete rehabilitation of their mouth and their smile, and those with chronic diseases and other health conditions. That’s where the magic is. That’s where the sweet spot is for us.”