Acta is 40 years old: two universities in one dental faculty
The Acta dental faculty is forty years old. Its founding was by no means a cause for celebration as the VU and UvA dental schools were forced to merge. Still, the two universities live on within Acta. “There were no two dental schools in the Netherlands as different as the UvA and VU.”
The fortieth anniversary does not really seem to be on top of mind at the Academic Centre Dentistry Amsterdam (Acta). A planned alumni day on 16 November to celebrate 40 years of Acta was cancelled due to lack of enthusiasm. The faculty is busy implementing a new curriculum and strengthening its administrative organisation with a new dean who took office since October.
Dental surplus
Nor was there any enthusiasm in 1984, when the dental faculties of the UvA and VU were obliged to merge. In the early 1980s, the Netherlands was in an economic crisis and cuts had to be made on all fronts, including dental schools: there was a dental surplus and of the five dental schools in the Netherlands, two had to close their doors, the Ministry of Education ruled.
That the UvA and VU dental faculties would merge was soon decided. “That was obvious,” explains Ubele van der Velden (80), emeritus UvA professor of periodontology and still working, as a guest, at Acta. “Two courses in the same city, which complemented each other in research. At the UvA, for example, there was a strong department of periodontology and materials science, while the VU in turn had a good department of oral microbiology and orthodontics.”
The two faculties not only had to be merged but also halved. “Then education minister Wim Deetman addressed the two deans at the time,” recalls Van de Velden. “And said: ‘Gentlemen, if you don’t do it I’m going to do it. And I am convinced that you will do it better than me.”’
In 1984, the merger was a fact and the VU staff moved to the UvA building on Louwesweg. Cooperation was not so smooth in the beginning. Van der Velden: “There were no two dental schools in the Netherlands as different as the UvA and VU. Staff members in the clinic in particular experienced the disadvantages of this; in the research this played less of a role. Opinions then still sometimes differed on how best to treat a patient.”
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Scientific education
In 1987 – to everyone’s surprise – the dental faculty in Utrecht had to close its doors. “I thought for a long time that we would move to Utrecht,” Van der Velden says. After all, Utrecht’s dental faculty was the oldest in the Netherlands and was also in a brand-new building.
In retrospect, Van der Velden calls it “Law of the handicap of a head start”. He explains: “Because Utrecht was the oldest faculty, it also had the highest average staff age. The professors themselves had had practical training which meant that, on average, scientific education at that faculty had lagged somewhat behind the rest of the Netherlands.”
That transition, from dental school as pure practical training to scientific training, where students learn to think academically and do their own research, eventually took as long as 50 years, Van der Velden estimates. In 1948, dental school became scientific on paper but it was not until around 2010 that that process was complete, he says.
Two kiwis a day
Scientific research also developed strongly in the first 20 years after the merger. Van der Velden graduated as a dentist in the early 1970s, and soon specialised in periodontology, the science that deals with everything around the tooth such as inflamed gums.
This was mainly due to Leo Coppes, the first professor of periodontology in the Netherlands. Van der Velden remembers his first lecture like it was yesterday, in which Coppes showed a photo of a 25-square-centimetre wound he had grimaced on his daughter’s arm. With this, Coppes wanted to make visible how large and invisible the inflammation is in periodontitis, a serious gum inflammation that affects one in 10 Dutch people. “You can’t see that, because it’s all hidden on the inside of the gums.”
Van der Velden spent his life working on why one person gets severe periodontitis and another does not. “I looked at lots of causes. Is it to do with specific bacteria, the immune system or heredity? Or with environmental factors such as stress?” In the end - after a study in Indonesia on a tea plantation southeast of Bandung among people who did not receive dental care - it turned out that nutrition played a very important role.
“What was found, among other things, is that vitamin C levels in the blood correlated strongly with the severity of periodontitis,” Van der Velden explains. “Since that time, I have advised my periodontitis patients to eat two kiwis a day: that is, after all, a natural source of large amounts of vitamin C and ensures that everyone gets enough vitamin C.” “That did work. And the advice still applies, although one yellow kiwi a day is enough these days.”
Denti-Mokum
Over the past forty years, the distinction between the two faculties has become increasingly blurred for students. This happened gradually, in 1984 students often still had separate lectures: the UvA students in the laboratories at medicine at the AMC and the VU on the campus in Amsterdam Zuid.
The two study associations did merge right away in 1984. The name Denti-Mokum, from the UvA association, had to make way for Favervuta, an abbreviation for Faculteitsvereniging VU tandheelkunde that could just as easily pass as an abbreviation for Faculteitsverenigingen Verenigde Universiteiten Tandheelkunde Amsterdam.
Since 2010, when the new Acta building on Gustav Mahlerlaan opened, Acta students follow the same curriculum. “The only difference I still notice as a student between the two universities is the logo on your diploma,” says Biba van Volen (22), fourth-year student at Acta and president of Favervuta. That logo represents the university of enrolment.
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Van der Velden does see the two universities living on within Acta. He himself “absolutely” still feels he is a UvA employee. “In the people, the two universities live on. The differences in approach, cooperation and decision-making are still there.” Even in the organisational structure, the division between the two universities still exists: 55 per cent are UvA employees and 45 per cent VU employees.
No alcohol
New recruitment has recently made the student population more diverse at Acta. By 2021, 40 per cent of students were of a nationality other than Dutch.
Study association Favervuta is adjusting its offerings accordingly. Van Volen: “Students at Acta have different nationalities, beliefs and goals in their student life. Some students come for partying, others want to learn something. And not everyone drinks alcohol. So that’s not what we are about, it’s mainly about having fun and making contact.” Besides parties and drinks, there are also activities such as indoor football and laser gaming. The association also organises lectures for students by specialists, practice owners and manufacturers.
Independent
At administrative level, things have been messy in recent years with ever-changing deans. And that means the faculty is susceptible to being taken over by the medical faculty, something that already happened in Nijmegen and Groningen. Since October, VU-gynaecologist Fedde Scheele is the first permanent dean who should bring peace and stability to the faculty for the next four years. If it is up to Scheele, this will succeed and Acta will remain independent. “I can still see Acta in its current form becoming 50.”
The faculty board is even more optimistic, writing in the 2024 Annual Plan that Acta can face the next 40 years with confidence. Van der Velden also does not see why Acta should ever give up its independence. “The whole merger back then has really worked out very well in the long run. If you look at the research output, it has increased enormously. I don’t see why they would ever merge with medicine.”
