More Than Academics

Educating the Whole Person in a New Dental Faculty

Abstract

Whole Person Education (WPE) is central to the identity of a private Christian university in East Java, yet little is known about how it is enacted in a newly established faculty. This descriptive-exploratory study compared lecturers’ self-reports with students’ perceptions of WPE practices in the Faculty of Dentistry, where both students and lecturers were new to the institution. Parallel five-point Likert scale questionnaires with open-ended items were completed by 15 of 19 students and 10 of 14 lecturers. Perceptions were closely aligned across the intellectual, spiritual/ character, social-emotional, mental-physical well-being, and vocational/career domains (domain gaps ≤ 0.17). The largest item-level divergence ran in the opposite direction of the usual self-enhancement pattern: lecturers rated their own non-academic mentoring lower (M = 3.80) than students rated it (M = 4.53), although this exploratory difference was not significant after correction for multiple comparisons. Only eight of 15 students had heard of WPE, although most described experiencing its practices. Lecturers repeatedly requested basic WPE orientation and mentoring and communication training. In a new faculty, whole person education practices may precede both students’ awareness of the framework and lecturers’ confidence in enacting it; faculty development should therefore build lecturers’ capability and confidence and make WPE explicit to students.