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Program Director: Dr. Daniel Fried

Master of Science Degree in Oral and Craniofacial Sciences

Approved May 12, 2005 by the UCSF Graduate Council

university of California San Francisco

School of Dentistry

The MS in Oral and Craniofacial Sciences is a Plan I program that complies with the guidelines of the Graduate Division of UCSF. The MS is an academic degree requiring a minimum of the equivalent of one full year of research and didactic study.  The postgraduate program at UCSF allows the combination of academic/research training for the MS degree with clinical training leading to a specialty certification usually over a minimum three-year period.  Outstanding dental students may also apply for concurrent enrollment in the MS program.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MS

The MS requires a minimum of 30 units, of which at least 12 must bear the Oral and Craniofacial Sciences (OCS) 200 series designation. Students will be assigned a graduate advisor who will help guide them with programmatic and research direction decisions.  Each candidate will choose a separate research mentor (see below).

The following requirements must be met:

RESEARCH (12 units of OCS 250 and OCS 198 count towards the total of 30 required)

OCS 250 Research will be awarded as units with 0.5 days per week per quarter = 1 unit.   Prerequisite: The student must successfully complete OCS 198 (1 unit), before enrolling for OCS 250 credit. Successful completion of OB 198 requires submission of a research protocol, signed by their thesis committee to the program director before enrolling for OCS 250 credits. Twelve of these OCS 250 and OCS 198 units count towards the minimum of 30 units for the MS.  

A research thesis must be completed resulting from a project designed to answer a specific question (or questions) and to test a hypothesis.  Detailed guidelines are given in the following pages and in the graduate handbook.

RESEARCH MENTOR AND THESIS COMMITTEE

The research mentor must be a member of the Academic Senate and of the Graduate Group in Oral and Craniofacial Sciences.  However, with the approval of the Director of the MS program the mentor may be outside the Graduate Group, but a co-mentor within the Group will also be appointed.  The thesis committee (arranged by the research mentor and the student) must consist of at least three members of the Academic Senate.  The committee must be approved by the Director of the MS program, and is chaired by the research mentor or the co-mentor as described above.  The committee should meet early in the student’s program to approve the research protocol and as needed thereafter to assist in guiding and monitoring the progress of the project.  Non-Academic Senate members can be added who have specific expertise in the area of research, subject to approval by the Graduate Division (a curriculum vitae must be submitted for review).  The committee will be responsible for conducting the final examination of the thesis and the candidate.

DIDACTIC REQUIREMENTS (Minimum of 18 units)

Courses will be chosen in consultation with the graduate advisor, and must be approved by the appropriate clinical program director and by the Director of the MS program.  Each clinical program may require certain of the following courses to be taken by all students in the program to fulfill accreditation requirements for that clinical specialty.   Courses in excess of 18 units may be taken with the approval of the graduate advisor.


CORE COURSES

A.      Mandatory Courses (Each course must be taken - 10 units)

OCS 198 (Thesis Protocol)                                             1 unit   

OCS 220 (Seminar Series)                                              1 unit

      OCS 297 (MS Journal Club)                                            1 unit       Fall and Winter quarter

DPH 200 (Behavioral Aspects of Research and Ethics)     2 units     Summer quarter

BS 183 (Intro. to Statistical Methods)

        or other approved biostatistics course                  4 units     Fall quarter 

DPH 210 (Intro. to Research Methods and Design)            2 units     Summer quarter

             or other approved research methods course

B.  Core Electives (Minimum of 4 units to be chosen from the following)

OCS   224 (Host Response/Immunology)                         2 units     Winter quarter

OCS   225 (Oral Microbiology and Virology)                                                                        

    Offered alternate (even-numbered) years                  2 units     Spring quarter            

OCS   221 (Extracellular Matrices & Mineralization)           2 units     Winter quarter

OP   208 (Oral Pathology Seminar)                                  3 units     Winter quarter

GD   210 (Developmental Biology)                                   2 units     Fall quarter

OMS 200 (Interdisciplinary Clinical Correlations)              

         Offered alternate (odd-numbered) years              2 units     Summer quarter

RD   213 (Chemical Aspects of Dental Caries)                  2 units     Fall quarter

ELECTIVE COURSES

Electives from upper-division or graduate level courses
Must make up the minimum of 18 didactic units; can count up to 4 units towards the total of 30.  Students may choose from graduate academic courses such as those listed below to complete the minimum of 18 didactic units for the MS degree.  They may be taken outside of the School of Dentistry with the approval of the course instructor.  Clinical postgraduate programs may require one or more of the following electives to be taken to fulfill requirements for the clinical program.  Extra units may be taken to round out an individual=s program.  Courses should be chosen in consultation with the student’s graduate advisor and must be approved by the clinical program director(Specialty Programs) and by the Director of the MS program.

* Abbreviations:       BS =        Biostatistics
                                 GD =         Growth and Development
                                 DPH =       Dental Public Health and Hygiene
                                 OCS =       Oral Biology/Oral and Craniofacial Sciences
                                 OMS =      Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery 
                                 OP =         Oral Pathology
                                 RD =         Restorative Dentistry/ PRDS
 
MS IN ORAL AND CRANIOFACIAL SCIENCES
PROCEDURES FOR DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING THESIS RESEARCH PROJECT

The combined program leading to specialty certification and the MS degree requires that a research thesis be completed.  This will consist of a single research project that satisfies both the clinical and academic research requirements.  

Students in this program must choose their research mentor and project by the end of Spring quarter of the first year.  A protocol should be prepared in this time frame and an initial meeting held with the thesis committee at least by early fall of the second year.

The project should pose a well-focused, interesting question and a hypothesis that can be tested in a feasible set of experiments that can be accommodated within the time frame of the program so that the student can finish and receive her /his Certificate of Completion and MS degree at the end of three years.  Therefore, great care must be taken in the project planning stage so that the project is well focused, yet of adequate scope and significance.  

There are both clinical research questions and more basic science-oriented projects.  Either type of project is suitable.  

The project must:
A.    Ask a question (or questions) which is scientifically meaningful and clinically consequential.

B.    Involve a careful research design with due attention to generating testable hypotheses, acquiring appropriate samples, collecting data with minimal bias and conducting statistical tests or data analysis.

C.    Have a reasonable chance to succeed, given the time and resources available.

D.    Have a reasonable chance to yield some definite and tangible new findings.

The project must be developed in consultation with a proposed research mentor, the Oral and Craniofacial Sciences graduate advisor, the Director of the MS program, and the clinical program director (Specialty Programs).  Other faculty with expertise in the area of interest may also be consulted.

Informal project presentations and reviews will be held in the fall of the second and third years to review progress.  

The following are examples of suitable projects are given as general guidelines.

1.    Experiments with animals or tissue culture cells that have direct relevance to clinical questions.  For example, studying conditions that favor more rapid healing of bone defects or recruitment of mesenchymal cells to a bone lineage would use basic science techniques to address a problem of great clinical relevance.

2.    Projects at the interface of treatment and laboratory experimental analysis.  For example, root resorption can be a problem in orthodontic treatment.  Are there growth factors or degradative enzymes in crevicular fluid of patients that might be of predictive of root resorption, or other undesirable outcomes of a particular rate or direction of tooth movement?

3.    Projects that use patient cohorts and/or databases as resources to ask questions related to treatment choices and their relationships to other parameters.  The project undertaken should be hypothesis-based and have significant intellectual input from the student.  Product testing according to an already established protocol, or statistical analysis of data that is already assembled and organized, is not an acceptable format for a research project. However, using available databases as a resource to develop and analyze a new kind of question would be suitable.  

The student should also clarify that the resources needed to carry out the project are available in the mentor's lab, or can be provided by the department.     

ADVANCEMENT TO CANDIDACY

Students must submit their Application for Candidacy with appropriate signatures, including the proposed title of their thesis and the names of their committee members (Research Mentor as chair and two other Academic Senate faculty), to the Graduate Division by the last day of the quarter preceding the one in which they will complete the thesis and graduate, e.g. the last day of winter quarter for those students graduating in the Spring.

COMPLETION AND SUBMISSION OF THESIS

The thesis must be submitted in final form (in full compliance with the rules of the Academic Senate as detailed in the enclosed documents prepared by the Graduate Division), with the original title page signed by all members of the committee, no later than the last day of the quarter in which the student wishes to graduate.  In general, there is no grace period for this deadline.  Students who have not completed their theses by this date would have to register for the quarter in which they would complete the thesis (e.g., Summer Session 1 or 2).


Daniel Fried, PhD
Director, MS Program in Oral and Craniofacial Biology
(April, 2005 revised May 2005)

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