HAMILTON, N.Y. -- Playing on its household namesake, the famous toothpaste, Colgate University announced today that it will open a graduate school of dentistry, as an April Fools' Day joke.
Releasing a polished video with tongue-in-cheek appearances by an array of administrators, faculty and a local dentist, the university posted the video on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media sites.
Numerous students appear in the video along with: Douglas Hicks, provost and dean of the faculty, the Colgate Raider mascot, Scot Ioset, a Hamilton dentist, Gary L. Ross, dean of admission, Tony Aveni, professor of astronomy, Dewitt Godfrey, associate professor of art, Robert Tyburski, Colgate's vice president, Autumn and Gavin Hames, children of media manager Matt Hames, Claudia Caraher, assistant to the president, and Jeffrey Herbst, Colgate's president.
The accompanying press release carries the same flavor as the video, with plenty of dental puns.
"We conducted an incisive review of our curriculum," said President Jeffrey Herbst, "and we agreed that while we have an extremely strong pre-professional program in the health sciences, there is a gap in our current curriculum. Because Colgate has so many successful alumni in the field of medicine, we should have no problem establishing name recognition."
Dave Tobin can be contacted at 470-3277, dtobin@syracuse.com or via Twitter: @dttobin