After five years as head of the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health, Siri Beier Jensen has agreed to extend her employment for a further three years. The new educational model needs to be brought into play, the research profile needs to be honed, and collaboration across the department remains in focus. So it’s a case of stay on track and keep moving forwards, as she puts it.

2021.10.21 | Lise Wendel Eriksen

Siri Beier Jensen will continue as head of the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health up to and including the summer 2024. Photo: Jonathan Bjerg Møller, AU Health

When Siri Beier Jensen entered building 1610 on Vennelyst Boulevard in August 2016 for the first time, not only was she beginning a new job, she was also entering a brand new department. With the appointment of the new department head, the Department of Dentistry and the School for Dental Assistants, Hygienists and Clinical Technicians were officially merged into a single Department of Dentistry and Oral Health under the Faculty of Health at Aarhus University.

"The process in a merger like this takes decades. There are old habits that need to be broken down and new ways of thinking that need to be thought, and there are all the practicalities with coordinating, merging and renaming many things. It takes time to create a good and shared work culture, but we’ve come a long way over the past five years. In fact, so far that we ARE one department. People view us as the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health, and the potential is still enormous," says Siri Beier Jensen, who came from a position as associate professor of oral medicine at the University of Copenhagen. Now she is taking three more years as department head, which Acting Dean Hans Erik Bøtker is very pleased to see:

"Siri is a competent and very able manager who is able to bring together and develop an organisation with many different disciplines. She has helped to strengthen the department's research profile and focused on modernising the dental study programmes so we have what’s now known as' The Aarhus Model of Dental Education'. That’s quite an accomplishment in so few years."

Visionary Aarhus model is making strong progress

Although the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health is one of the faculty's smaller departments, it houses no less than five dental study programmes. Under Siri Beier Jensen's leadership, the department has begun work on revising the academic regulations to give the study programmes increased coherence:

"We’re rethinking all of our study programmes, so that each of the professional profiles are academically clear. At the same time, we’re utilising the academic kinship and the synergy inherent in integrating teaching across the programmes, which all have the orofacial area as a common denominator, so that our students have integrated team-based teaching that will help them function optimally as a professional healthcare team after they graduate. This is a complex task, and I'm incredibly proud of the educational model that we’re building, which isn’t found anywhere else in the world, but which already inspires educational thinking in other contexts," she says.

Read the article “The eyes of the world are resting on the Aarhus Model of Dental Education

Research efforts need to be brought together

In 2019, the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health defined their joint research strategy 'Orofacial Health – a part of general health' with three overall research themes: 'Diagnostics and imaging', 'Oral ecology and inflammation’ and 'Function, pain and rehabilitation'.

According to Siri Beier Jensen, the research strategy is the backbone of the work to strengthen the department's research profile:

"Odontology is a relatively small field of study in terms of medicine as a whole, and although we have some of the world's most talented researchers at the department, we are few in number. We must therefore team up and join forces internally. We need to make clear to the outside world what we can contribute and build strong interdisciplinary bridges that can enrich us mutually, so that our research has a stronger position – nationally and internationally. This is a key task, also in the coming years," she says, adding:

"We’ve succeeded with a much needed expansion of our academic staffing. Particularly at assistant professor level. This provides a strong environment for young research talents and a necessary foundation for research-based teaching, which we will also be offering on our knowledge-based programmes, so that all the study programmes are built on a common foundation."

A distinctive voice with strategic flair

Not surprisingly, the position of department head can sometimes end up in stormy weather. Around thirty per cent of Siri Beier Jensen's time as department head has been during the coronavirus pandemic, which she describes as 'eighteen months of crisis management'. And most recently, the government's decision to set-up a third dentistry degree programme in Hjørring has resulted in a public debate in which Siri Beier Jensen has been a distinctive voice.

Read also ‘Department head: New dentistry degree programme in Hjørring seems arbitrary’

"Siri has strategic flair. She has made a very significant contribution to the department’s increased visibility externally – both here at the university, in the political arena and in the international research and education environments. She is absolutely the right person to lead the department, so I’m very pleased that she will continue as department head for another three years," concludes Hans Erik Bøtker.

Siri Beier Jensen approaches the task ahead with both humility and fighting spirit:

"I'm looking forward to continuing to work for the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health, for Health and for Aarhus University. We’ve got so many really, really talented people here at the department, both employees and students, and I'm really pleased with and proud of what we can build together. We work hard, but we’ve also got many things we want to achieve. So it’s a case of stay on track and move forwards.”

More about Siri Beier Jensen

• Department head at the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health since 2016.
• Associate professor of oral medicine at the University of Copenhagen from 2011
• PhD degree from the University of Copenhagen in 2006: ‘Oral adverse effects during and one year after adjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer patients’.
• Employed as a dentist in private practice 1998-2001.
• Master of Science in Dental Surgery from the University of Copenhagen in 1998.
• Born 1972.

Contact

Department Head Siri Beier Jensen
Aarhus University, Health
Mobile: (+45) 9350 8525
Email: siri@dent.au.dk