Canise Bean, DMD, MPH, professor emerita at The Ohio State University College of Dentistry and current president of the Ohio State Dental Board, will deliver the keynote address at Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine’s Class of 2025 convocation ceremony on May 21, 2025, at the Staller Center for the Arts.
A leader in helping to deliver oral healthcare services to underserved areas, Bean served as the director of community education at OSU for more than 20 years, overseeing the Oral Health Improvement through Outreach (OHIO) Project, a mobile dental coach that cared for children in Columbus City Schools as well as 27 other community-based sites.
“I am so pleased to welcome Dr. Bean to Stony Brook for what will be a monumental day in the lives of this year’s graduates,” said Patrick M. Lloyd, dean of Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine. “Dr. Bean has long been a leader in dental education, community service and organized dentistry, and our convocation ceremony will be enriched so greatly by the anecdotes from her remarkable career and journey – and the advice she can give this next generation of oral healthcare providers.”
Bean earned her Doctor of Dental Medicine from the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry in her hometown of Lexington. She then completed a General Practice Residency at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, after which she practiced general dentistry in the Greater Cleveland area for more than a decade. Bean went on to receive her Master of Public Health from The Ohio State University, and she served as faculty in the College of Dentistry’s Department of Restorative and Prosthetic Dentistry for more than 20 years. She has earned numerous professional accolades, including several teaching awards from dental students at OSU, including the Office of Outreach and Engagement Distinguished Service Learning Award. Furthermore, she has been presented with the William J. Gies Award for Vision and the National Dental Association/Colgate-Palmolive Faculty Recognition Award for Teaching.
Of the many grants from local, state and national organizations that Bean has received in her career, most noteworthy is the $1.5 million award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to launch the OHIO Project at OSU. She also has an impressive list of publications in well-respected journals and has presented several papers at the scientific sessions of numerous national dental associations.
Bean was a founding member of Shaker Dental Associates, the first African American private dental group practice in Cleveland, and was also the first female president of the Forest City Dental Society, an organization comprised of 60 minority dentists in the Cleveland area. She is also a fellow of the International College of Dentists, American College of Dentists and Pierre Fauchard Academy.
