Ohio State’s College of Dentistry, located at Postle Hall on Neil and West 12th Avenues, on Wednesday. Credit: Daniel Bush | Campus Photo Editor

The Ohio State Board of Trustees approved a $16 million renovation to Postle Hall, which will create a new dental simulation space for students. 

Approved in the Dec. 4 meeting, the simulation is designed to help future dental professionals cut back on mistakes and become more efficient by using virtual reality technology to help with their transition to treating actual patients, according to the College of Dentistry’s project plan. 

The project will develop nearly 16,000 square feet in the new addition to Postle Hall, according to the plan. 

According to project materials, the space will include two student dental simulation clinics, an equipment and instrument dispensary, a digital radiography facility, a computer-aided design and machining laboratory, a dental hygiene student simulation clinic and a wet/dry laboratory.

“A new simulation lab equipped with the latest technology [will] help ease students’ transition into the clinical phase of dental school and allow them to provide better care for their patients,” said Jake Falter, a graduate of Ohio State’s 2020 dental class, in the project materials. “My time in the simulation lab was critical to my development as a student dentist.”

The lab will simulate a clinical environment for dental and dental hygiene students, with space for 125 full-size dental chairs. Five of those will be designated for clinics, according to the project data sheet. 

This renovation plan comes years after Postle Hall went through its first expansion, which began in the summer of 2018 and was completed in December 2020. This project added 130,000 square feet, enabling the college to increase its yearly admission rate for dental students by 10 percent.

According to the project sheet, the college educates more than 60 percent of the state’s dentists and is the only state-supported dental school in Ohio. 

According to the data sheet, the project is scheduled to open in January 2027.