Sandra D'Amato Palumbo

Education

B.S.,Dental Hygiene Education, University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1981
MPS,Health Administration, Quinnipiac College, Hamden, Connecticut, 1994
Administrative and Clinical Residency, Yale-New Haven Hospital, Department of Dentistry, New Haven,Connecticut, 1993-94

Other

Sandra is the Director and tenured, Assistant Professor in the Department of Dental Hygiene at the University of New Haven. She has been a full-time faculty member in the department since 1996, spanning the freshman, junior and senior-level curriculum, including the clinical, community-based and academic areas. Her areas of expertise reflect the following courses taught in the Program: Introduction to Dental Hygiene I and II, Dental Hygiene Clinical Concepts III-V, Dental Hygiene Research, Oral Medicine, Senior Internships, Senior Projects, and the Community-Based Program. In addition to her academic teaching schedule, Sandra has developed the Community-Based Program (the outreach, educational component of the Dental Hygiene Public Health course); and she has also developed clinical policy and procedure manuals for the treatment of medically compromised patients. Sandra has been an active member of the New Haven Dental Hygienists’ Association and the Delta Lambda Chapter of Sigma Phi Alpha Dental Hygiene Honor Society.

Her external, professional lecture schedule has included the Connecticut and the New Haven Dental Hygienists’ Association, The New Haven Head Start Program, The State of Connecticut Department of Mental Retardation, The Lambda Chapter of Sigma Phi Alpha Dental Hygiene National Honor Society, and various health care institutions that address the special-needs and the medically compromised populations, which are her areas of expertise.

In addition to her professional and university memberships, Sandra serves on the following community-based committees that provide students with multiple community-based opportunities:

• The New Haven Board of Education Head Start Program’s Health Advisory Committee
  
• The City of West Haven’s Health Advisory Committee
  
• The State of Connecticut – Department of Mental Retardation, South Central Region, dental hygiene consultant
  
• The New Haven Oral Health Coalition
  

Sandra’s academic interests include developing dental hygiene educational-teaching tools and educational curriculum to enhance students’ ability to learn about the medically compromised patient. Her recent co-authored CDROM publication is an example of a, educational tool that is designed to assist students or practicing dental hygienists with learning about oral pathology in a patient-case format.. What a learning experience! The 50 case studies were developed from the clinical pictures, radiographs and photomicrographs in the 4th edition textbook, 2004, titled, Oral Pathology for the Dental Hygienist, O. Ibsen and J. Phelan. In 2003, the UNH Department of Dental Hygiene Curriculum Management Plan, developed by Sandra, was featured at the National Dental Hygiene Director’s Conference.

Along with her teaching profession, Sandra stays clinically active and current while working in private practice, both in a practice limited to general dentistry and a practice limited to periodontics. When Sandra is not teaching at UNH, she loves spending quiet time with her husband, her two teenage daughters and her large Italian extended family. Her hobbies include: weight training, cardiovascular exercise, reading dental hygiene texts and journals, and cooking Italian, healthy meals. Also, she volunteers at the Hospital of Saint Raphael, pediatric outpatient clinic, and at the "Dynomite Sunday at the Peabody Museum" oral health promotion event (an event that commemorates Children’s Dental Health Month in collaboration with the New Haven Denial Association). Sandra lives by her motto: "balance is the key to success"