Kaohsiung Medical University (formally a College) was established in 1954, the very first private medical college in . Three yours later, in 1957, we established the first private dental school in within our university, accredited by the Ministry of Education. To date, the School of Dentistry is  60 years old. In 1985, we established the very first MS program in Dentistry in our country, followed by setting up a Ph.D. degree program in 1990, the first such program in Dentistry in . In 1992, we further established the first Graduate Institute for Oral Health Science (GIOS); providing the concrete basis for promoting dental public health in our country. In order to offer further clinical-basic science training for denstists on a continuing bases, the On-the-Job MS program was founded within the graduate institute of dental and oral health sciences in 1999. This program has a special feature focusing on “Periodontal Prosthodontics training for the practicing dentists, and it is currently the only one of its kind in .

With the refinement of the university’s organization and mandates, we evolved into a full-sized College of Dental Medicine by 1999, providing our country's very first and foremost college-level professional education in all aspects of basic and clinical dental sciences, which is consisted of the School of Dentistry and a separate Department of Oral Hygiene. Our School of Dentistry runs four different programs: the undergraduate program for DDS training, the M.S. program and the Ph.D. program for graduate training and the On-the-Job MS program for the established dentists. In parallel, the Department of Oral Hygiene also has four programs: the undergraduate Hygiene program, the On-the-Job undergraduate program, the M.S. program and the On-the Job M.S. program.