Long-serving UWC dental-school dean has much to smile about
MORE than four decades ago, a young Yusuf Osman started studying dentistry at a tiny dental school housed on a single floor of Tygerberg Hospital.
Today, he retires as the dean of Africa’s premier dental school – the Faculty of Dentistry at UWC.
“I started here in 1974, and now it’s 2020 – that’s a lifetime. And I’ve had this great experience as a student, staff member, dean… what more could I ask? I’m a first-generation graduate, like many of you sitting around here, but my children are all graduates who have gone on to pursue their own dreams.
“That’s what education does for you. That’s what UWC did for me,” Osman said, when faculty and friends gathered to celebrate him recently.
Osman is UWC’s longest-serving Dean of Dentistry since the incorporation of the School of Oral Health Science of the University of Stellenbosch into the Faculty of Dentistry of UWC.
“Over the years the faculty has been on a trajectory – onwards and upwards. We’ve achieved a lot, and there’s still great potential for more. But it’s seasonal, and there’s a time for change.
“You must move on, and encourage new people to take on new challenges. We can’t stand still and let the world pass us by,” he said.
Professor Vivienne Lawack, UWC’s deputy vice-chancellor: academic, and acting rector, said Osman was committed. “It would be almost impossible to capture a lifetime of commitment in a few sentences – especially the kind of commitment that’s inspired generations of students and staff all around the world to do more than they ever could have imagined. That’s the kind of commitment Professor Yusuf Osman has displayed.”
When Osman left UWC as one of the first graduates of the Faculty of Dentistry, the university didn’t even have a hall for graduation.
Over the decades since, as a lecturer, deputy dean and eventually dean, he helped the university and faculty grow from strength to strength, becoming the largest dental school on the continent, and a World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre.
“That really captures the kind of legacy you are leaving at UWC,”
Lawack said.
“Under your leadership, the faculty has not only made an impact on the global stage when it comes to teaching and research, but has also become a beacon and an example to other faculties, of how one can integrate your community engagement with your teaching and with your research,” Lawack added.
Luckily, Osman said, the Faculty of Dentistry was more than ready to take the university to the next level.
“We have the right people and the right vision to take dentistry forward,” he said.
“That’s why it’s a good time for me to leave, knowing that there are such amazing people, individually and together, who will take this faculty and the profession ahead.”
Osman will be honoured with an honorary doctorate from the University of Oslo in Norway in September.
In the meantime, he said, he was learning to relax and slow down.
“I always told everybody that in my next life I’m not going to have any Mondays, and that’s what I have now.
“I have a great weekend and I sleep late on Monday morning. So if you need me to do something, talk to me on Tuesday or thereafter, okay?”