Williams Stepping Down as Dental School Dean

The UNC School of Dentistry will be getting new leadership as it prepares to open a large addition to its lab and classroom complex.

John Williams has announced that he will step down as dean of the school in June 2010. “It is time for me to pursue other academic interests and move on,” Williams wrote in a letter.

“I came to Carolina four years ago with great enthusiasm and respect for the many good things already in place and in anticipation of many new things that could be accomplished by the UNC School of Dentistry community,” the letter said. “Together we have done much of which to be proud. We have advanced the mission of the school on several fronts through enhancements made to the educational programs and particularly the DDS clinical program, research program, student support and leadership engagement, diversity success, the new Dental Sciences Building construction project and recognition by peer institutions.”

Williams came to UNC in 2005 from the deanship of the University of Louisville School of Dentistry, where he had been since 1999. UNC will conduct a national search for a new dean, and a committee is expected to be appointed soon.

The school, which started in two old World War II Quonset huts as it awaited completion of its first building in 1952, expects to move into a 216,000-square-foot addition at the corner of Manning Drive and South Columbia Street in 2012. It will be the school’s fourth expansion – the Dental Research Center opened in 1967, Brauer Hall in 1969 and Tarrson Hall in 1997. The 1967 building was torn down last fall.