Allan Formicola, D.D.S, M.S.

Professor of Periodontics and Dean Emeritus Columbia University College of Dental Medicine,

Allan Formicola is a professor of periodontics and dean emeritus of the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, a position that he held from 1973- 2001. Formicola has served in many leadership positions, such as president of the American Association of Dental Schools. He has served as the vice president of the Commission on Dental Accreditation and chaired Accreditation Site Visit Teams.

During his leadership at Columbia, he is credited with a strategic change in mission that reinforced the importance of a joint medical/dental curriculum in the biomedical sciences and an expanded school mission in community service. The Community DentCare Network that improved access to oral health care in underserved communities in northern Manhattan was developed under his leadership.

Formicola currently is professor of dentistry in the Center for Family and Community Medicine at Columbia University. The Center leads the Northern Manhattan Community Voices Collaborative that is designed to improve the overall health of underserved communities. Formicola co-directs, with Dr. Howard Bailit, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project entitled Pipeline, Profession & Practice: Community-Based Dental Education (Dental Pipeline), the largest Foundation initiative undertaken in the field of dental education. It aims to increase the enrollment of underrepresented minority students in dental schools and to provice all students with service learning in underserved community sites.

Formicola has received numerous awards for his contributions some of which include an honorary doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Detriot Mercy, Georgetown’s Distinguished Alumni Award, the Harlem Hospital Dental Service’s Award for Contributions to Minority Education, and the American Dental Education Association’s Distinguished Service Award. Formicola has also contributed over fifty articles, abstracts, and book chapters to the dental literature.

Formicola received his D.D.S. degree from Georgetown University in 1963 and an M.S. degree in periodontics in 1965. After spending two years as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, Formicola held teaching positions at the Schools of Dentistry at Georgetown University and at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He was appointed chairman of the Department of Periodontics at the New Jersey Dental School in 1970 and became the school’s associate dean of academic affairs in 1973 and also served as acting dean from 1976-1978, prior to arriving at Columbia University.