Vision
We are health professionals with an emphasis on oral health promotion, risk assessment and disease prevention, diagnostics, surgical and non-surgical treatments, and therapeutics that optimize patient and community health and well being. We function within a learning organization that is a diverse community of learning students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends. Our shared goals involve quality, service and efficiency, and we strive for excellence and innovation in what we learn, how we learn, and how we communicate our innovations and discoveries to others. We take enormous pride in being part of a major research-intensive private university in California, and we are positioned to collaborate within our University with other Colleges as well as with Pacific Rim and Latin American countries.

Mission
The USC School of Dentistry (USCSD) is a "learning organization," dedicated to our own ongoing learning, flexibility, comfort with change, and openness to new ideas. We are committed to improving the health of all people through education and training, innovation and discovery, community health outreach, and leadership. USCSD seeks to provide outstanding undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate academic programs of instruction for highly qualified students leading to academic degrees in the oral health professions; extend the knowledge of oral health by encouraging and assisting faculty in the pursuit of innovations and discovery scholarship; improve the oral health of all people of Southern California; stimulate and encourage in our students those qualities of scholarship, leadership, and character that mark the true oral health professional; serve California and the nation in providing life-long learning to oral health professionals; and, provide oral health leadership in the solution of community, regional, national and international complex problems.

Values
We celebrate and manage diversity to optimize full participation of our students, staff and faculty. All members  (students, faculty, staff, administration, alumni) of our learning organization are "learners". We emphasize students and patients at the very center of our enterprise. We pride ourselves on world-class quality, service and efficiency. Conclusions from studies and analysis reveal to us that the leadership role we see in health and oral health education, training, patient care, and innovations and discovery in science and technology, will require USCSD to create a unique academic profile in the future.

Strategic Plan