Rate My Professor Urvashnee Govender

Urvashnee Govender serves as Senior Lecturer in the School of Dentistry and Oral Health within Griffith University's School of Medicine and Dentistry, located on the Gold Coast campus. She earned her Bachelor of Dental Hygiene from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, and completed postgraduate training with a Masters of Public Health. Her career trajectory at Griffith University includes an initial role as Lecturer, documented in 2014 university news coverage, advancing to Senior Lecturer. She also holds the position of Program Director for the Bachelor of Dental Hygiene (degree code 1613), responsible for overseeing the degree structure comprising 240 core credit points across various learning periods. In teaching, Govender convenes essential courses such as Dental Hygiene Practice 1 (1035DOH Y1 and Y2), which introduces fundamentals of dental diseases and preventive dental care; Dental Hygiene Practice 4 (2037DOH) delivered on campus in person; Advanced Dental Hygiene Practice 1 (3036DOH) in mixed mode on campus; and contributes to reading lists for 1036DOH and prosthetic technology courses like 2202DOH.

Govender's academic interests center on dental education, motivations for career choices in dentistry, and barriers in public sector oral hygiene. Her key publications include the co-authored "Dental Students' Motivations for Their Career Choice: An International Survey" (2014, Journal of Dental Education, with J. du Toit et al., cited 87 times), "Attitudes of South African Dental Therapy Students Toward Compulsory Community Service" (2008, with A. Bhayat et al.), and "Services rendered and barriers faced by public sector oral hygienists in two provinces of South Africa." Additional works cover first-year Australian dental students' career reasons over three years and international comparisons in dental student motivations. These contributions are hosted in Griffith University's research repository and ResearchGate, where her three listed research works have accumulated citations. Her research supports insights into global dental profession trends and oral health service delivery.