M Dentistry - Spring 2025

For the University of Michigan School of Dentistry Community | Spring 2025

From

a Tradition

Leadership

Dea n ’ s Message

Dear Alumni and Friends,

As we move through our 150th year as a School of Dentistry, we are continually reminded of the incredible historical legacy of this educational enterprise. It is truly remarkable to think of the school’s humble origins in 1875, a century and a half ago, and then fast forward to our mission today. Countless things have changed in the interim – in human history, in our society, in dentistry. But one thing hasn’t changed: Our school’s commitment to excellence and leading dentistry in education, patient care, scientific research and innovation. That commitment has led our school to being ranked the No. 1 dental school in the world in the 2025 QS World University Ranking for Dentistry.

In this edition of M Dentistry, you will find a historical timeline that highlights people and events that laid the foundation and shaped the evolution of the school over the decades. The sesquicentennial is a great prompt to look back at how far the school has come. At the same time, in a year when we celebrate our past, we remain focused on the future with the upcoming opening of our Digital Dentistry Center and the start of the “Look to Michigan” fundraising campaign, also highlighted in this edition.

Our school stands at a pivotal moment that calls for a bold vision and collective action. That’s why we are involving alumni, donors, faculty, staff and friends of the school in a conversation about building on our legacy of excellence to shape the future of oral health. Access to dental care remains a critical need, financial barriers continue to burden the next generation of providers, and our simulation and research facilities must evolve to enable modern teaching, discovery and innovation. Conducting 21st century research in laboratories designed in the 1960s is no longer feasible, and the initial training of superb clinicians would be improved by renovated simulation facilities with state-of-the-art equipment that incorporates digital capabilities and haptics.

These are not small hurdles, but I firmly believe that together we can overcome them. I invite you to join us over the coming years as we generate new ideas for both our school and the broader dental profession, working together to bring them to life. With your support and generosity, we can continue our work training world-class dental professionals and driving groundbreaking research that improves people’s lives. Together, we will redefine what’s possible in oral healthcare and empower the next era of excellence at our School of Dentistry.

For what’s next, Look to Michigan! And Go Blue!

Sincerely,

Jacques Nör, Dean

Donald A. Kerr Collegiate Professor of Dentistry

Spring 2025 Volume 41, Number 1

M Dentistry is published twice a year for alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends of the School of Dentistry. See the school website at www.dent.umich.edu for more news and features.

Dean Jacques Nör

Director of Marketing & Communications Raymond Aldrich

Editor .Lynn Monson

Magazine Design Ken Rieger

Writers Lynn Monson, Geoff Larcom, Cindy Heflin

Photographers Lon Horwedel, Lynn Monson

Mary Lewandowski, Ken Rieger, Jeff Smith

University of Michigan School of Dentistry

Alumni Society Board of Governors:

Terms Expire Fall 2025:

Chair: Debra Lisull, DH Cert ’74, BSDH '79, DDS '83, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Janice Pilon, DDS ’93, Hanover, N.H.

Julie Thomas, DDS ’89, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Immediate Past Chair: Allan Padbury, Jr, DDS ’99, MS '02, Jackson, Mich.

Jennifer Cullen, BSDH ’12, Ypsilanti, Mich.

Brittany Forga, BSDH ’10, Van Buren Township, Mich.

Terms Expire Fall 2026:

Chair-elect: Jake DeSnyder, DDS ’67, Plattsburgh, N.Y.

William Mason, DDS ’81, MS ’84, Saginaw, Mich.

Michael Palaszek, DDS ’82, Grand Rapids, Mich.

Scott Szotko, DDS ’99, La Jolla, Calif.

Elizabeth Milewski, BSDH ’15, Ionia, Mich.

Christine Farrell, BSDH ’81, Lansing, Mich.

Terms Expire Fall 2027:

Amin Jaffer, DDS ’97, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Mona Riaz, BSDH ’12, MS ’20, Farmington Hills, Mich.

Riley Schaff, DDS ’17, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Joseph Yancho, DDS ’18, Traverse City, Mich.

Alicia Worden, BSDH ’19, Linden, Mich.

Robert Dost, DDS ’80, Lexington, Mich

Ex Officio Members:

Jacques Nör, Dean

Carrie Towns, Chief Development Officer, Alumni Relations and Development

The Regents of the University:

Jordan A. Acker, Michael J. Behm, Mark J. Bernstein, Paul W. Brown, Sarah Hubbard, Denise Ilitch, Carl J. Meyers, Katherine E. White, Domenico Grasso (ex officio)

Send comments and updates to: dentistry.communications@umich.edu or Communications, School of Dentistry, 1011 N. University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1078

The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Equity, Civil Rights and Title IX Office (ECRT), 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1432, 734-763-0235, TTY 734-647-1388.

© 2025 The Regents of the University of Michigan

FEATURES SCHOOL

FEATURES

School’s Comprehensive Campaign Focuses on the Future

The School of Dentistry's next philanthropic campaign launched on April 4, gathering momentum from its dedicated community members that will encourage the world to “Look to Michigan for the Future of Oral Health.”

Alumni, donors, faculty, and students gathered for a day committed to advancing the School of Dentistry into its next era, emphasizing conversation, collaboration and the celebration of philanthropy.

An “Ideation Workshop” united alumni and donors with faculty leaders for an afternoon of brainstorming about the school’s future needs. The event marked an important step in the early stages of a comprehensive fundraising initiative, part of the university’s “Look to Michigan” campaign.

The themes of philanthropy, generosity and impact resonated throughout the day, culminating in the inaugural “Donors and Scholars” event – a meaningful celebration of donor support and student success.

Held at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), this special gathering brought together the school’s most engaged donors who support student scholarships and the students who have benefited from their funds. Student speakers expressed their heartfelt gratitude, sharing how philanthropy has profoundly changed their lives. Donors, in turn, spoke of the various and often deeply personal reasons they create and contribute to student scholarship funds, underscoring the vital role philanthropy plays in empowering future generations and enriching the lives of both the students and their donors.

hygiene students who have received scholarship assistance from the Welke fund are (second from left) Khadijah

(BSDH 2025) and Sweta Patel (DH Class of 2026).

Ideation Workshop

The 25 alumni, donors and faculty who met during the afternoon workshop are the foundation of what will become a larger Campaign Council that will continue to

The two events signal the start of an in-depth conversation across the entire School of Dentistry community to ensure the school remains a national and international leader in shaping the future of oral health.

Above: Dean Jacques Nör (left) talks with scholarship sponsor Susan Welke (BSDH 1961, MSPH 1964) and her husband, Robert, of Mahomet, Illinois, during the Donors and Scholars reception. Two dental

Mohammad

shape a donor-driven vision for the school's future. The goal is to create a call to action for others to support the school and ensure that Michigan Dentistry remains at the forefront of dental education, research and practice by identifying and investing in the critical areas that will define the profession over the next decade. The volunteer alumni champions and faculty are guiding conversations on the challenges and opportunities ahead, and harnessing the power of philanthropy to drive meaningful, transformational change.

Such discussions are critical in an era when the models for practicing dentistry have evolved dramatically in recent years, with increasing integration of technology, new care delivery models, and shifts in workforce expectations. The champions leading this effort will consider: How do we best prepare future clinicians to be nimble and successful in an ever-changing landscape? What investments are necessary to maintain Michigan Dentistry’s position as the premier institution for dental education and innovation?

To address the variety of issues, organizers set up four areas of emphasis for the discussion leaders:

• Next Generation and Wellness, led by Faculty Champion Dr. Sarah Tomaka and Donor Volunteer Dr. Riley Schaff, is focused on the many ways to provide holistic support for student success in and out of the classroom.

• Community of Culture and Health Equity, led by Faculty Champion Dr. Todd Ester and Donor Volunteer Dr. Jordan Brunson, is focused on ensuring oral healthcare access across all communities.

• Art, Aesthetics, and Technology, led by Faculty Champion Dr. Dennis Fasbinder and Donor Volunteer Dr. Rob Nakisher, is focused on how investments in physical spaces and artistic enhancements can transform teaching, learning and patient care.

• Innovation and Research, led by Faculty Champion Dr. Alex DaSilva and Donor Volunteer Dr. Gregg Lurcott, is focused on how the school can integrate new technologies, such as the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, digital dentistry and biomaterials, into world-class training and patient care.

Dean Jacques Nör said the dental school must move forward with a collective vision and collective action. “For more than 150 years we have led the way in dental education, patient care, research and innovation. Now, through ‘Look to Michigan’ and the generosity of our alumni and friends, we are building on that legacy to shape the future of oral health.” These early conversations helped surface shared priorities and reaffirmed the important role philanthropy will play in turning visionary ideas into reality.

Donors and Scholars Reception

The evening reception at the UMMA celebrated just a few of the Michigan dentistry community who unlock the potential of aspiring dental students and graduate residents by making financial gifts that fund scholarships and fellowships. About 150 alumni, donors and students attended the event, which is one of many this year that also celebrate the 150th anniversary of the school’s founding.

For some of the students in attendance, they were meeting, greeting and thanking their benefactors in-person for the first time, sharing the profound, personal impact on giving for both donors and students.

Dr. Joe and Barb Kolling, who chair the school’s Sesquicentennial Committee, opened the evening’s program by noting the extraordinary support and generosity the school receives. “You are not just donors and advocates; you are the foundation upon which our success is built and the key to our

member

future innovations in dental education and practice. … We are deeply grateful for your commitment and partnership on this journey. Together, we are shaping a future that honors excellence, fosters innovation, and embraces inclusivity.”

The students who spoke – Joi McClellan, Elise DeConinck, James Bennett III and Abby Puckett – each shared details of their path to the dental school as a way to thank the donors who contributed to their scholarships.

“In addition to the financial considerations, I see the scholarships as representing a belief in the next generation of dentists like me,” said DeConinck, a fourth-year student. “These scholarships show me that we are supported by our Michigan dental community from the moment we start dental school. We are establishing our careers with an understanding of how impactful giving back to dentistry can be. We are humbled recipients of generosity, and we are empowered by the commitment you all have made to support us as we delve into this profession.”

Bennett, a third-year student, said he is grateful for the leadership of the U-M dental school alumni who have gone before and now remain committed to help the current generation. “That is what leadership is all

Faculty, alumni, donors and development staff gathered at the Michigan League for an afternoon brainstorming session centered on the theme of “Look to Michigan for the Future of Oral Health.”

Faculty

Dr. Don Heys talks with Zoya Mulji, a second-year DDS student.

about – leaving the field better than you found it,” he said. “Your generosity allows us to focus on our education, develop as leaders, and shape the future of our profession without being weighed down by financial burdens. I know I speak for every student in this room when I say: You have set the standard, and we are incredibly fortunate to have you here tonight.”

Donors who spoke during the program – Dr. Mark Adams, Dr. Karen-Lee Jones Stewart and Harvey Sackett – briefly recounted their inspiration for keeping close ties with the dental school and its students. Adams, a prosthodontist and alumnus living in Colorado, said he is grateful the dental school accepted him from a blue-collar family background. He and his wife D’Ann created the ASK Scholarship (for Adams, Shick and Kotowicz) in honor of his mentors Drs. Richard Shick and William Kotowicz, who “completely personify the Michigan tradition of leadership and had an extraordinary and lasting impact on my life.”

Stewart, an alumnus who practices in Ann Arbor, is the daughter of the late Dr. Lee

Jones, an alumnus who was the first Black dentist in Ann Arbor and led the dental school’s early commitment to diversity by directing the school’s Office of Minority Affairs beginning in 1973. Stewart said she and her family think often of her father’s stories about having to work during dental school. He washed dishes at a sorority, running back and forth from the dental school to do the job after both lunch and dinner. During one summer break, he earned tuition money by working in a General Motors auto plant. For his senior year, he took the advice of a classmate and took out a loan, which made his senior year more enjoyable. Stories like those are why the Lee Jones Scholarship Fund is so important for today’s students, Stewart said.

Sackett, an attorney from Napa, California, has honored his late father, Sidney, a 1938 alumnus of the dental school, with two financial gifts to the dental school. One is a scholarship for students who are hearing impaired, as was his father. A second is the bequest of a significant art collection that Hackett and his wife Patti Connery have

accumulated. Sackett said maintaining ties to his father’s alma mater and helping current students honors the love his father had for his time in Ann Arbor and his talent as a dentist in New York. “My Dad’s high standards were largely self-generated, yet I am quite comfortable in saying what his professors taught him impacted how he chose to practice general dentistry for 47 years. For this I say ‘Hail!’”

Carrie Towns, the school’s Chief Development Officer, concluded the program by thanking donors who are, by investing in dental school students and residents, “shaping the future of oral health and improving the well-being of countless individuals.” She said the dedication and passion of the school’s student scholars are inspiring and set the standard for the profession of dentistry moving forward. “Tonight reminds us of the power of collaboration, community and shared purpose. Together – through shared vision and action – we are building a brighter future for dental education, research and care.”

1. Elise DeConinck, a fourth-year DDS student, thanks donors for their scholarship support.

2. Michelle Beverly, a student in the 2027 graduate periodontics class, talks with donors Karen Kerry (DDS 1985) and her husband Bradford Chick.

3. D’Ann Adams touches the shoulder of her husband Mark as a student speaker describes his gratitude for receiving a scholarship sponsored by the Adamses.

4. Members of the audience listen during the program.

5. Khadijah Mohammad (BSDH 2025) takes a selfie with DH faculty member Sheree Duff in front of the sculpture, “Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii.”

6. Dr. Todd Ester, Associate Dean for Well-being and People, greets Dr. Karen-Lee Jones Stewart (center) and Dr. Marilyn Woolfolk (DDS 1972), Professor Emerita of Dentistry and Assistant Dean Emerita of Student Services.

7. James Barrett III, a third-year DDS student, praises donors for their forward-looking contributions to student scholarships.

8. Dr. Mark Adams talks about why he created the ASK Scholarship.

9. Donor Metodi Pogoncheff (DDS 1976) reveals the University of Michigan seal and Block M that adorn the inside of his sport coat. His wife Marcia (right) and emeritus faculty member Dr. Marilyn Woolfolk join the display of university loyalty.

This composite of the first graduating class in 1876 lists names but not the order on the page. The largest photo at center is U-M President James Angell; directly above Angell is dental school Dean Jonathan Taft. Graduates are the smaller photos across the top though there should be nine. The rest are dental school faculty and other university leaders.

Since the start of the Dental Hygiene program in 1922, the school has granted 3,460 DH degrees and certificates. Graduate degrees in the various specialties added over the years, along with PhDs in the last three decades, boost the student total by a few thousand more. Each of those graduates has gone out into the world and improved the oral health and, thus, the overall health of thousands of people, whether directly or indirectly, in their work as dentists, dental hygienists, researchers and educators.

The 150-year timeline on the following pages is an attempt to help the reader walk through the evolution of the U-M dental school, from the primitive days to the present day. It highlights deans who led the school, curriculum changes, expansion of facilities, new technologies, and other major developments.

Viewed collectively over a century and a half, even in this summary fashion, the history and legacy of the University of Michigan School of Dentistry is clear. All through the years, the founders and those who followed demonstrated an enduring dedication to the highest standards of dentistry, education, science, leadership and excellence. Just as Jonathan Taft would have wanted. ■

School History Resources

Providing a comprehensive history of 150 years at a major dental school would require a book for every year. Those don’t exist. Instead, short histories of certain eras were published in book chapters and random alumni bulletin booklets, particularly around the school’s 100th anniversary in 1975. A recent book covers the school from 1962-2017. Otherwise, the history is found in individual documents and files in the various archives of the school and university.

Here are a few resources used for the historical timeline on the following pages:

• The University of Michigan: An Encyclopedic Survey, a major publication in four volumes from 1942-1954 (and later updated), contains a chapter on the School of Dentistry in Part VII.

• The School of Dentistry Alumni BulletinCentennial Issue 1875-1975, published as a historical retrospective by the late Dr. Charles C. Kelsey (DDS 1964, MS 1967), a prosthodontics faculty member who served as the school historian. The publication is not a chronology, but documents selected people, images and accomplishments.

• Occasional history articles in other Alumni Bulletins during the 1970s and ‘80s.

• Victors for Dentistry (1962-2017), a book edited by former communications director Sharon Grayden with contributions by former alumni magazine editor Jerry Mastey.

• Beginning in the 1990s, the school produced an alumni magazine DentalUM, which later grew into M Dentistry, now published twice a year.

• The online catalog of the school’s Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry lists some of the publications in its collection that are tied to the U-M school.

• A series of school newsletters started in the 1970s, with names such as The Dean’s Memo, Memorandum and The Michigan Dental Explorer, list mundane monthly happenings at the school.

History timeline for the U-M School of Dentistry, 1875 to 2025.

Prelude to the Dental School

1865-1874

The University of Michigan’s founding date of 1817 in Detroit was followed 20 years later by a move to Ann Arbor in 1837. It wasn’t until 1865 that momentum began to build for the university to add a dental school to train students in the growing occupation of dentistry. It was not yet a profession governed by training standards, though the Michigan Dental Association (MDA) had been founded in 1856. In 1865, a committee of the MDA, headed by Dr. Jonathan Taft, petitioned the U-M Board of Regents to establish a “dental chair” that would be the first dental school in the nation to be part of a university. After Regents took no action, the MDA renewed its call in 1866, 1873 and 1874. The 1873 petition used competitive pressure to note that Harvard University had organized a dental school within its medical department. What follows is the U-M School of Dentistry’s 150-year timeline, starting with its founding in 1875 after Regents and the State Legislature finally saw the need for the school.

1875

Language from the Regents Proceedings: Resolved:

That a College of Dental Surgery be established, which shall, in addition to the facilities now afforded by the Medical Department and Chemical Labora- tory, be constituted by the founding of two professorships.

Resolved:

That the Dental Profession of the State be requested to cooperate with the Regents by suggesting, at the June meeting, such names as they may deem suitable, and also be securing the necessary outfit.

First dental school building, 1875-77.

The Michigan state legislature establishes a College of Dental Surgery at U-M. The same law establishes a Homeopathic Medical College and directs that the new colleges be housed together. Governor John J. Bagley signs House Bill 518 into law on May 1, 1875. U-M Regents formally approve the measure on May 12, 1875.

Jonathan Taft Dean 1875-1903

The school graduates its first woman, Alma Fuellgraff.

1880

1877

Second dental school building, 1877-91. Because of rivalry between dental and homeopathic students and a lack of space, the Dental College moves to a second venue – another renovated professor’s house at the current site of the Clements Library on South University Avenue.

Dental curriculum extended to two years; each term nine months.

1884

A growing number of students prompts Dean Taft to ask regents for an addition to the dental building, but the board rejects the request due to lack of funds.

1885

Dental College curriculum extended to three terms (three years) of nine months each.

1889

School graduates Ida Gray, the first Black female dentist in the country.

After 15 years of using daylight near windows as the only light source while treating patients, gas lighting is added to the clinic.

The College of Dental Surgery becomes the first dental school to provide graduate dental education.

1890

Carrie Marsden Stewart

Dr. Carrie Marsden Stewart is the first student to receive a graduate degree, Doctor of Dental Science (D.D.Sc.), after the program was established in 1890 to require a year or more of advanced study beyond the basic dental degree.

1894

The Class of 1896 sits in a lecture hall with auditorium seating. A note on the bottom of the photo says it was given to the school by E.F. Lohr in 1954 and it identified the woman in the front row as Mary Lohr. Although other students in the photo can be confirmed in the 1896 class graduation composite, Mary Lohr is not among them nor in years before or after the class.

Regents approve $60 to install new-fangled electric lights to replace gas lights in the Clinical Laboratory during the December holiday break. Students had complained that gas lights installed in 1890 were inadequate for the operating room, particularly when window light faded in the late afternoon during short winter days.

1896

1891

Dental school building, 1891-1908.

Dental College moves into a building recently vacated by the University Hospital – on North University Avenue, the current site of the Chemistry Building. Based on its architecture, dental students refer to the building as “the cowsheds.”

1901

Dental curriculum extended to four academic years. However, because the dental profession and other dental schools do not approve, the three-year program is re-adopted in 1904.

School of Dentistry building, 1908-1969.

Property is purchased to construct a building designed to be a dental school. Along North University Avenue at the school’s current location, the three-story structure opened in October 1908 as the most advanced dental education facility in the country. It was the main dental school building for more than 60 years until it was demolished in 1969 when the current clinic building and research tower were completed.

1907

1906

The Dean Who Never Served

U-M Regents appoint world-renowned dental educator and researcher Willoughby Dayton Miller as the dental college’s third Dean. An Ohio native who earned an undergraduate degree at U-M, Miller was living in Germany where he had conducted research at the University of Berlin for 28 years. Before starting his Deanship in the fall of 1907, Miller visits Ann Arbor briefly, then travels to Ohio to visit relatives. He falls ill with appendicitis and dies in Newark, Ohio, on July 27, 1907. In 1940, a bas relief sculpture as a memorial to Miller was installed and remains on the south side of the school’s Kellogg Building along North University Avenue.

1910

Faculty member Dr. Russell Bunting begins research on the cause and control of caries.

Cyrenus G. Darling Acting Dean 1903-07

Neville S. Hoff Acting Dean 1907-11; Dean 1911-16

Four-year curriculum in place. Dental schools nationwide follow the U-M lead and adopt similar programs.

Dr. Chalmers Lyons taught his first oral surgery intern in 1917 at University Hospital, recognized as the start of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery specialty. Today’s 108-year-old OMFS/Hospital Dentistry department at U-M is the longest continually-maintained program for OMFS residents in the country.

1917

The state’s dentists petition the Michigan legislature and it enacts a law authorizing dental hygienists.

1919

1915

Graduating classes grow steadily to 87 students by 1915, but the advent of World War I significantly drops classes sizes to only 38 by 1920. A decade later it rebounds to 118 graduates in 1930.

This photo was taken in 1909 in the main clinic of the new state-or-theart dental building finished in 1908.

U-M alumna Dr. Hertha Hartwig (DDS 1915) takes over as the Dental Hygiene faculty member in the program’s second and third years.

1922

1921

School approves Dental Hygiene curriculum leading to a certificate. Eight students enroll in the fall and graduate in spring 1922 under the tutelage of Laura May Helmar, a dental office nurse who is also listed as a student in that first class.

U-M graduate school recognizes the dental graduate program and confers its first Master of Science degree.

Marcus L. Ward Dean 1916-1934

U-M becomes the first dental school to offer graduate training in orthodontics leading to the Master of Science degree; with one year of training, George Moore and Frank Cartwright earn the first-ever Orthodontics M.S. in 1924.

1885-1900 Foot-powered Engine – Foot-powered engines, or pedal drills, like this one were used in the dental school in early years. They were used by dentists to power their drills before the widespread availability of electricity led to more modern drill motors.

The College of Dental Surgery is renamed the School of Dentistry to conform to the U-M policy designating “Schools” as those that require at least four years of undergraduate education for admission. That standard was lowered decades later during the dentist shortage of the 1960s and 1970s when the school accepted students who hadn’t yet completed an undergraduate degree.

1923 1927

Dorothy Hard, DH Director, 1924-68.

A 1922 DDS graduate of the dental school, Dr. Dorothy Hard, is hired to lead the Dental Hygiene program. For the next 44 years, under her forward-thinking leadership and strict student protocols, the DH program becomes a widely-recognized national leader. Hard retired in 1968.

1924 1930 1933 1931

Dr. Kenneth Easlick named director of the Children’s Clinic at the school.

He developed a special course in dentistry for children as an early proponent of the specialty.

First U-M joint doctoral science degree in dentistry and metallurgical engineering awarded to Dr. Floyd Peyton, who later becomes a pioneer in the field of dental materials.

School begins a longitudinal study of dentofacial records of children at the University Elementary School.

Four-year DDS curriculum re-established. Two-year pre-dental requirement becomes compulsory for all entering students. Dr. Philip Jay establishes the Michigan Dental Caries Control Program. Dr. Paul Jeserich, a proponent of continuing education in the health sciences, persuades the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to provide an $110,000 grant for postgraduate education.

Metal shortages because of World War II seriously affect the school’s ability to obtain dental instruments for students and treating patients. The Kellogg Foundation grants $113,000 to purchase instruments to loan to dental students. The school graduates only 11 students, the fewest in its history, because World War II limited the pool of students.

1935 1942 1947

Chalmers J. Lyons Dean 1934-35

1938

The school collaborates with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to plan a building specifically for postgraduate dental instruction. The foundation grants $236,500 and the Public Works Administration provides $209,835.

DH certificate curriculum expanded to two years.

1937

1940

Kellogg Building, 1940-present. The “W.K. Kellogg Foundation Institute: Graduate and Postgraduate Dentistry” (below) opens in a new three-story building along Fletcher Street, on the west side of the main School of Dentistry building.

Russell W. Bunting Dean 1935-50

The Dental Hygiene curriculum adds an optional route to a bachelor’s degree in DH requiring two years of study in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, followed by a two-year DH course of study. The certificate program remains.

1948

Dental hygiene instructors (in white caps) oversee students treating patients in this photo, ca. 1950s. at work with patients on the DH side of the main dental clinic in the 1908 building. The cubicles and equipment in the photo were an upgrade installed in 1949.

Dr. James Hayward, at age 32, becomes the youngest person to chair a department when he is named to lead Oral Surgery.

1952

1953

Dr. Robert Moyers, a leading researcher in orthodontics, joins the school as department chair. Among many accomplishments, in 1964 he helped establish and was director of the Center for Human Growth and Development, a university-wide, interdisciplinary unit studying childhood development and growth. In 1974, an annual symposium was established in his name.

Paul H. Jeserich Dean 1950-62

Ground is broken in February for construction of the new dental building. For the next three years, students and faculty in the old building are subjected to the sights, sounds and distractions of thumping construction equipment and falling bricks as the new building is constructed only a few feet away from the north and east sides of the existing building.

On June 6, 1966, early excavations uncovered a casket containing the body of William Asa Fletcher, the first chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. It is reinterred in the nearby Forest Hill Cemetery the next day.

1966

William R. Mann Dean 1962-1981

1964

U-M Regents approve $14.9 million for an expansive new dental school building. The $18.4 million cost was cited at the time as the second most expensive building project in State of Michigan history, behind only the Mackinac Bridge.

Dental Hygiene adds graduate program to address the need for more DH educators.

$1.7 million remodeling of Kellogg Building begins.

1967

1968

Pauline Steele, DH Director 1968-88.

Pauline Steele becomes the second director of the Dental Hygiene Program and serves for 20 years.

The 1908 building is still standing in fall 1969 before being torn down after the new Research Tower (at right) and new clinic building were built around it.

1969

Phase I of the new dental school complex – the main clinical research wing and the Research Tower – are completed and occupied. The 1908 building is torn down and Phase II is started in its place, featuring an elevated library wing along North University and an addition to the east side of the Kellogg Building.

The school adopts a new and expanded curriculum after a major review, with an emphasis on adapting to advances in technology.

Dr. Major Ash becomes chair of the first occlusion department in the U.S.

1971

Phase II of the new building is complete and the school holds a ribbon-cutting to celebrate what is considered the leading dental education facility in the country.

As part of the new building celebration, a sculpture by Bill Barrett is unveiled in the courtyard of the school. A gift of the Class of 1944, the irregularly shaped artwork with no official name quickly becomes known as The Tooth Fairy.

The school’s new state-ofthe-art television studio opens in the addition to the Kellogg Building. Faculty and students are filmed treating patients, as a training aid for students and other providers around the world who were interested in learning procedures and the latest techniques.

1972

School begins community outreach summer clinics in Adrian and Stockbridge, Michigan. From the early 1970s to 1997, the school operated two mobile units that traveled to community outreach sites around Michigan, including migrant farmworker locations.

Federal Title IX is enacted, marking a turning point in the make-up of dental classes in what had been a male-dominated profession for a century. The law prohibits sex discrimination in educational settings receiving federal financial assistance. By the end of the 1970s, women in entering DDS classes grew from 2% to 20% and grew steadily in coming decades, reaching 50% in 2004.

The dental school television studio, circa 1970s.

1973 1976 1977

Dr. Lee Jones

At a time when dentistry organizations were acknowledging a lack of racial minorities in the profession, the dental school is one of the first to take action, establishing the Office of Minority Affairs under the direction of alumnus Dr. Lee Jones (DDS 1961). He led the office for more than 20 years, establishing a supportive environment that continues today.

Summer migrant dental clinic program begins in the Traverse City area.

1975

School celebrates its centennial, which includes the Michigan Marching Band spelling out “DENT 100” before the annual Ohio State football game.

The school receives international attention when faculty member Dr. James Harris, who had been conducting anthropological research in Egypt since 1965, identifies a mummy as Queen Tiye, who was the grandmother of King Tut. Harris used skull x-rays and an electron probe of a small hair sample to identify Queen Tiye’s mummy, which had previously been disregarded and unidentified.

The U-M dental school is recognized by the Student National Dental Association for having the highest enrollment of Black students behind two Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Meharry Medical College and Howard University.

New technology and videos recorded by the school's television cameras allowed students to access audio-visual curriculum materials in the independent learning center called CAI-DENT (Computer Aided Instruction).

The school records its largest-ever class of graduates, with 151. From the 1940s through the 1960s, DDS classes had averaged around 90 students. With the opening of the new, larger building in 1971, class sizes in the ‘70s and ‘80s were regularly around 150 students. DH classes also grew from the previous 39 students before the new school to 80 in the new school.

1978

With Michigan and the nation in a recession, new Dean Richard Christiansen was forced to make staff and faculty cuts by as much as 14-15 percent, along with not filling open positions, over the next two to three years to cover budget shortfalls. Class sizes were also cut during this period; by 1987, the new DDS class was down to 90 students from a high of around 150 at the start of the decade.

1982

Dental Hygiene program drops the 2-year certificate and moves to only a BSDH degree with 1 year of liberal arts courses and three years of DH instruction.

1985

Departments

of Hospital Dentistry and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery move to the U-M hospital, while retaining a presence at the dental school.

1986

Robert E. Doerr

Interim Dean 1981-82

Richard L. Christiansen Dean 1982-87

D1s and D2s have historically spent most of their time in the school’s large lecture halls, which were remodeled occasionally but remained the most efficient way to lecture to classes with 100-plus students.

When Richard Christiansen stepped down as Dean, U-M Provost James Duderstadt appointed faculty member William Kotowicz as Interim Dean and chair of a Transition Committee. Duderstadt tasked the committee with a major revamp of the school – determining strengths and weaknesses, reducing the number of departments (from 18 to 6, ultimately), revising the curriculum and finding ways for the school to come out of its silo to become more integrated with other U-M health science disciplines and the rest of campus.

1987

William E. Kotowicz Interim Dean 1987-89 Dean 1995-2002

Wendy Kerschbaum, DH Director, 1988-2012

Wendy Kerschbaum named director of Dental Hygiene after retirement of Pauline Steele.

1988

When Bernie Machen arrived as Dean in 1989, he immediately endorsed the work of the Transition Committee in realigning and reducing the number of departments. The new structure was officially approved by the school’s Executive Committee in mid-1990.

1989

Office of Alumni Relations formed under the direction of Dr. Arnold Morawa.

1990

Dr. Dennis Fasbinder was one of the faculty members who helped develop the school’s early advances into CAD/CAM and other computer technologies in the early 1990s.

1991

Curriculum Task Force changes were implemented gradually from 1988-91 with goals of providing students with earlier clinical experience; year-round classes and clinics; a new comprehensive patient care program; elements of practice management; and continuing education.

Faculty and administrators universally described the gradual evolution over several years of the new departments and curriculum changes as extremely difficult but necessary, and they credited its success to the committee’s thoughtful hard work and Bill Kotowicz’s administrative leadership and personal skills.

J. Bernard Machen Dean 1989-95

Dr. Gordon Sindecuse

The school opens a museum of dental history, prompted by a major gift the year before from Dr. Gordon Sindecuse, a 1921 DDS alumnus who practiced in Kalamazoo from 1921 to 1952 before pursuing an interest in investing in the stock market. He eventually gives the school a total of $4.8 million for what becomes the Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry.

1992

Dr. Charlotte Mistretta

The school establishes an Oral Health Sciences PhD program under the direction of faculty member Dr. Charlotte Mistretta from 1994-2010.

1993

The school hosts the inaugural Ramfjord Symposium, held biennually in honor of longtime Department of Periodontics chair Sigurd Ramfjord, who retired in 1980 after 30 years at the school as a world-renowned periodontics researcher.

1994

The school establishes Profile For Success, a summer enrichment program introducing dentistry to undergraduates from underrepresented and diverse communities around the country.

Ramfjord Symposium Established

The School of Dentistry joins with the American Dental Association, the Michigan Dental Association and the city of Grand Rapids to sponsor an International Fluoridation Symposium to mark the 50th anniversary of fluoridation of the city’s water system. The trials, begun in 1945, proved fluoridation prevented caries and the practice spread across the country and around the world.

1995

The Multicultural Affairs Committee, or MAC, is established at the recommendation of a committee that conducted a schoolwide cultural audit. The group generates programs, events and awards that foster a welcoming, educational and supportive environment for all members of the school community.

1996

Vertically integrated clinics (VICs) are launched. Dental and dental hygiene students gain clinical experience beginning their first year.

School presents its first annual Ida Gray Award, to Dr. Lee Jones, to recognize students, faculty or staff for their significant contributions to the school’s welcoming and inclusive community.

1997

A $13 million Kellogg Building renovation, including a major expansion of the Orthodontics Department, begins (and is completed in 2000).

1998

First two doctorates in Oral Health Sciences are awarded, to Jacques Nör and Esam Tashkandi.

The longtime Table Clinic Day, a half-day event held in dental school hallways, expands to an all-day Research Table Clinic Day at the Michigan League. It was forerunner of today’s annual Research Day.

1999

School’s Community Outreach expands to year-round part of curriculum, instead of just a summer program, in an agreement with five communitybased organizations around the state who accept fourth-year DDS students as providers.

2000

School begins new tradition of annual White Coat Ceremony for the entering DDS class.

Darnell Kaigler, Jr., is first U-M dental student to complete the dual DDS/PhD program.

A major renovation, the first since the “new” clinical wing of the school was opened in 1969, creates a new Simulation Lab for first- and second-year students, with computers screens and manikin heads at 110 workstations.

2004

Apple Computer and the dental school launch an innovative partnership to provide dental students with computers and around-the-clock access to education-related content. Students gain access to audio recordings of lectures – the new term then was “podcasts” – that they can listen to anywhere, any time, via Apple Computer’s iTunes platform. Other units on campus and around the country soon follow the innovation.

2005

The school’s $10.6 million in grants from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research is ranked first among the nation’s dental schools.

2006

Peter J. Polverini

Dean 2003-13

2019 White Coat Ceremony

Major technology enhancements include 160 computers in the four VIC clinics, which makes patient records available at each cubicle; a MiDENT system to enhance patient scheduling, treatment histories and billing; and 3-D digital impressions are taken and shared with patients in the Advanced Education in General Dentistry clinic.

Dental Hygiene’s E-learning Degree

Completion program begins, allowing students to work on their degree while working in their home communities.

As social media flourishes, the school joins the revolution with YouTube and Flickr sites. By 2014, the photos on the school’s Flickr site had received more than a million views; similarly, the school Facebook page established in 2009 grew to 1.7 million views by 2016.

2008

A Vision Implementation Team spends nearly two years re-envisioning the curriculum, which is implemented in 2010 with continual guidance from faculty. It introduced changes in preclinical instruction, earlier clinical experience, opportunities for students to explore more career path options via a Pathways Program, greater collaboration with faculty, and more exposure to scientific knowledge needed in providing patient care.

Janet Kinney, DH Director, 2012-22

Janet Kinney named directed of the Dental Hygiene program and will lead it through 2022.

2010 2012

Online MSDH program begins.

Dr. Laurie McCauley is named Dean, the first woman to lead the school.

A Strategic Planning Committee is formed to continually assess school needs within five domains: People, Education, Research and Discovery, Patient Care, and Responsible Growth and Sustainability.

2013

Laurie K. McCauley Dean 2013-2022

Dental Hygiene curriculum begins transition from three-year schedule with summers off to a two-year, year-round schedule.

Integrated Special Care Clinic, funded by Delta Dental, opens at the school’s Community Dental Center in downtown Ann Arbor. It later moves to the dental school.

2018

2014

School stops using paper records for new patients and moves to electronic records.

Faculty member Stephen Stefanac symbolically makes a paper record into a paper airplane to commemorate the school's move to electronic records.

2017

Kerr Symposium Established

The school hosts the inaugural Kerr Symposium, a biennial event named in recognition of the achievements of Dr. Donald Kerr, a dental and medical school faculty member for 40 years before retiring in 1977. He was widely recognized for his work in periodontology and oral pathology, along with the development of special dental programs for oral cancer patients.

2019

University dignitaries and state legislators attend the groundbreaking ceremony for the start of a major, four-year renovation of the School of Dentistry. Called Blue Renew, the $140 million project is funded from the dental school, university and State of Michigan. It is the first major renovation of the dental school’s main building since it was completed in 1971.

The

worldwide Covid-19

pandemic hits in March.

Enhanced health and safety protocols are immediately implemented for faculty, students, staff, patients and Blue Renew construction workers who must be in-person to complete their work or treatment. But most of the school operations (other than clinical care) move online with faculty, students and staff working remotely from their homes. In less than a week, faculty and administrators convert the curriculum coursework to online instruction. Students and faculty interact via Zoom and other online conferencing. The entering first-year class, which normally arrives in-person in early summer, begins classes online and doesn’t arrive at the school until early fall.

Commencement and the White Coat Ceremony for first-year students are held online because of pandemic restrictions involving crowds.

2020

Health safety protocols during the Covid pandemic included temperature checks for everyone entering the dental school, here in September 2020.

In a typical scene four months after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted campus and the world, DDS students are shown during a Zoom meeting for an online class with faculty member Dr. Dennis Fasbinder. (Photo courtesy Sarah Swartz-Bouwkamp, Class of 2022.)

Students and faculty show their Covid-19 vaccination cards in this collage from social media in early 2021.

The Blue Renew renovation continues as does student instruction and patient care thanks to a well-planned and choreographed schedule that closes only some of the clinics until their remodeling is complete. When those re-open, others are closed for remodeling. The school’s north entrance, next to the Fletcher Street Parking Structure, becomes the main entrance with easier and more obvious access for patients. A new four-story addition rises in the former large courtyard along North University Avenue.

First cohort of graduate students begin school’s new one-year MS degree in Oral Health Sciences.

2021

In March 2021, at the one-year mark of the Covid-19 pandemic, students treat patients in one of the newly renovated clinics being brought online on a rotating basis as part of the Blue Renew building project. The large yellow gowns were mandated as a more effective Personal Protective Equipment. Compared to white clinic coats, the gowns used heavier, material, leading some students and faculty to label the garb as “shower curtains.”

Blue Renew construction workers install steel beams in 2020 on the new addition built in the school's courtyard.

Jan Hu

Interim Dean 2022-23

After nine years as Dean of the School, Laurie McCauley is named Provost of the University of Michigan. Jan Hu, chair of the Department of Biologic and Materials Sciences & Prosthodontics is named Interim Dean.

Division of Dental Hygiene celebrates its Centennial in August. The actual 100th anniversary was in 2021, but the celebration was postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

U-M President Mary Sue Coleman addresses the audience during

Dental Hygiene Class of 1948 members

Virginia McKown (left) and Myra Breakey were the most senior hygiene graduates to return for the program's Centennial Celebration, held in 2022 after the Covid pandemic delayed it by a year.

To celebrate the completion of the major Blue Renew renovation, in September the school holds a ribbon-cutting program attended by a large crowd of dignitaries, alumni and friends of the school. Hundreds of members of the public also tour the newly remodeled building.

“Perennial,” a striking art installation by award-winning artist Ralph Helmick, is completed in the three-story Sindecuse atrium.

2022

The “Perennial” sculpture hangs from the top of the atrium. It is composed of more than 900 goldleafed elements suspended by thin steel cables to form a 3-D rendering of a columbine flower.

the ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the conclusion of the major Blue Renew renovation in 2022.

Jacques Nör Dean 2023-present

2023

Jacques Nör, Chair of the Department of Cariology, Restorative Sciences and Endodontics, is named Dean.

The school’s Orthodontics Department celebrates its 100th anniversary.

Jennifer Cullen, DH Director, 2024-present

Jennifer Cullen named Director of the Dental Hygiene Division.

The Oral Health Sciences pro gram celebrates its 30th anniversary of graduating PhD students with an event that draws alumni and speakers from around the country.

School administrators and a Sesquicentennial Committee develop a year-long slate of activities to celebrate the school’s 150-year tradition of excellence and leadership.

Graduates at the 2025 commencement ceremony at Hill Auditorium recite the Dentist’s Pledge.

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Renée Du f f Named Senior Associate Dean SCHOOL

Faculty member Dr. Renée E. Duff is the dental school’s next Senior Associate Dean, effective June 1, 2025. Her five-year appointment extends through May 31, 2030.

The Senior Associate Dean works closely with the Dean on decisions throughout the school, and represents the dean as delegated at university and school levels. She will lead the school’s strategic planning process and supervise the school’s director of human resources, compliance manager and the director of safety, emergency preparedness and infection prevention.

Dean Jacques Nör cited Duff’s strong leadership in her current position as Associate Dean for Students in the Office of Student Services. Her work in that office dates to 2013 when she began as Assistant Dean for Student Services, with a promotion to Associate Dean for Students in 2020. The office focuses on recruiting, retaining and fostering the educational and career development of students in the school’s academic programs, including dental, dental hygiene, graduate and DDS/PhD students. Student Services is responsible for admissions, financial aid, registrar services, course registration and student support, such as wellness counseling and academic and career advising.

Duff has a longstanding connection to the university and dental school, first as a student who earned three degrees – a bachelor’s degree (1991), Doctor of Dental Surgery degree (1996), and a master’s degree in prosthodontics (2005). She began teaching at the dental school as a part-time faculty member in 1997 and became a full-time faculty member in 2004. She holds a faculty appointment as clinical associate professor in the Department of Biologic and Materials Sciences and Division of Prosthodontics.

The Associate Senior Dean position came open with the retirement of faculty member Dr. Mark Fitzgerald, who has been a part of the dental school for more than 45 years. He earned his undergraduate, DDS and MS degrees at U-M. He is a professor in the Department of Cariology, Restorative Sciences and Endodontics and served as Associate Dean for Community-Based Collaborative Care and Education (CBCE) from 2017 to 2024. His teaching, research and patient care, in both private practice and at the school, have been recognized with numerous awards and grants. M Dentistry magazine will profile Fitzgerald’s dental school tenure in the Fall 2025 edition.

Sean Edwards New Chair of OMFS/Hospital Dentistry

Dr. Sean Edwards began his new role as Chair of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery/Hospital Dentistry on Jan. 1, 2025. Dean Jacques Nör announced the appointment after an extensive search by a committee of faculty, staff and residents.

Dr. Edwards is the James Hayward Endowed Clinical Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and the Chief of Pediatric Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery/ Hospital Dentistry (OMFS/HD).

Edwards’ clinical expertise and interests include craniomaxillofacial anomalies, pediatric obstructive sleep apnea, cleft lip and palate, craniofacial trauma, pediatric oncology, and pediatric neoplasms of the craniomaxillofacial structures. He has written more than 45 papers in peer-reviewed publications, is the author of 15 book chapters and has given more than 200 lectures throughout the world on topics including reconstructive surgery, cleft lip deformities,

pediatric oncology and orthognathic surgery in special needs patients. He teaches and lectures on all aspects of oral and maxillofacial surgery at the predoctoral, graduate and postdoctoral levels. He has mentored more than 35 dental students and oral surgery residents.

Edwards earned his DDS from Dalhousie University School of Dentistry in Halifax, Nova Scotia, followed by his MD and residency at the University of Michigan Medical School. After his residency, he completed a fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh in pediatric craniofacial surgery. He returned to Ann Arbor for a fellowship in head and neck oncologic and reconstructive surgery in 2006 and has been part of the OMFS/HD department since being appointed as a clinical assistant professor in 2007. In 2017, he was named to the Hayward Professorship and has served as associate chair of the department since 2023.

Nör thanked Dr. Brent Ward, who has served as OMFS/HD chair since 2015 and remains a faculty member. “We are grateful for his service as department chair, providing leadership for significant expansions in the influence and footprint of his department locally, nationally and internationally,” Nör said.

Dr. Sean Edwards

Higher Ed Lobbying in Washington, D.C.

Dean Jacques Nör and several faculty, students and staff members from the School of Dentistry were part of two groups who lobbied Members of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in early April. Nör was part of a group representing the American Association for Dental, Oral and Craniofacial Research, the American Dental Education Association, and the Friends of National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. The group met with Congressional staffers to emphasize the importance of federal grant dollars for vital oral and craniofacial research, and for maintaining the NIDCR as an independent institute within the NIH. The ADA and MDA combined for their annual Lobby Day the previous day to discuss dentistry-related issues, including fluoridation, comprehensive dental insurance, deferred interest on loans for residents in graduate programs. Several U-M alumni also participated in the lobbying efforts. Pictured are: (from left) Christina Jones, a U-M dual DDS/ PhD student; Judith Jones, a U-M DH alumna and adjunct professor at the Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry; Keely Russell, a U-M dental assistant in Periodontics and Oral Medicine; Dean Jacques Nör; Effie Ioannidou, Professor and Chair of Orofacial Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Dentistry and current president of AADOCR; Javier Rodriguez-Rivera, a pre-dent student at UCLA; and Ann Decker, a U-M assistant professor in Periodontics and Oral Medicine.

Ida Gray Awards Emphasize Welcoming Atmosphere

The importance of continuing and celebrating the School of Dentistry’s long history as a welcoming and diverse community was the focus of the school’s annual presentation of the Ida Gray Awards in February. A student, staff member and faculty member were recognized for their significant contributions to the school’s commitment to an inclusive environment for work, learning, research, patient care and the many other parts of the school mission. The award honors the legacy of Dr. Ida Gray, the first Black woman in the country to earn a DDS when she graduated from the dental schoo in 1890. This year’s honorees are:

• Faculty member: Dr. McKenzie Maynor (left), an adjunct clinical assistant professor in the Department of Biologic and Materials Sciences & Prosthodontics. “Her support, guidance, kindness, knowledge and energy may sometimes go thankless, but never does it stop flowing in abundance,” a nominator said. She was cited for serving as a mentor, helper, team member, trailblazer and friend for many people around the school. Her work with the Student National Dental Association was also acknowledged.

• Staff: Celia Alcumbrack (center), the Marketing Manager in the school’s Marketing and Communications Office. Described as “one of the strongest supporters of Multicultural Affairs in our school” by a nominator,

Alcumbrack last year led a project that created a large “You Belong” mural on a vacant wall near the school’s north entrance. The mural, with a series of portraits of students, faculty and staff, highlighted their diverse backgrounds and interests. A nominator said the project

showed her “wonderful sense of creativity in creating a supportive climate for everybody.”

• Student: Oak Gar Moe (right), a DDS student in the Internationally Trained Dentist Program (ITDP) who graduated this spring. Nominators cited Moe for creatively fostering a climate of care, acceptance and welcome for international students. A native of Myanmar, he comes from a diverse background and shares his experiences and perspective with classmates, students, staff and faculty around the school. He has worked on an anti-racism project since arriving at the university and spoke on diversity issues at this year’s national meeting of the American Dental Education Association.

Elizabeth Van Tubergen Leads OHS MS Program

Faculty

member Dr. Elizabeth Van Tubergen has been appointed Director of the Oral Health Sciences Master’s Degree Program.

Van Tubergen is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Cariology, Restorative Sciences and Endodontics. Her appointment, announced by Associate Dean for Research Vesa Kaartinen, was effective January 1, 2025, and runs through December, 2028.

Sindecuse Spotlight

Artifacts from the extensive collection at the dental school’s Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry

The Clark Octagon Revolving Dental Cabinet

Inventor: A.C. Clark & Co., Chicago, Illinois. Circa: 1905

Van Tubergen will oversee and manage the MS program’s courses, student recruitment and budget. She will coordinate new course development; mentor and advise students in their academic and research endeavors; pursue funding opportunities to support students and the program; serve as the liaison for the school’s MS programs at the university’s Rackham Graduate School; and chair the OMS/MS program committee.

The dental school added the one-year Master’s degree program in 2020 to allow students considering dental school to strengthen their academic and research credentials for applying to DDS programs; to strengthen student’s applications for either DDS/PhD or PhD programs; and to prepare students for a research laboratory management career.

Van Tubergen received her DDS in 2006 from the U-M School of Dentistry, followed by a PhD degree in Oral Health Sciences in 2012 with a focus on head and neck tumor progression. She began her teaching career in 2014 and taught pre-clinical courses for firstyear students for five years before transitioning to pre-clinical courses for second-year students that she currently co-directs.

History: Chicago inventor Albert Charles Clark the dental equipment firm, A. C. Clark & Company, in 1895. Among its products was a limited run of two models of dental cabinets around 1905. The Sindecuse Museum collection includes Model A, which may be one of only 250 ever made, according to notes from the acquisition. Made of oak, the cabinet revolves on a fixed base. The clever, eight-sided design includes 30 compartments and drawers, 23 mother-of-pearl drawer pulls, recessed shelving, and a towel bin. A company advertisement in the North Western Dental Journal at the time called the cabinet “the most novel, labor-saving and by far the most convenient on the market.”

Provenance: Ohio dentist Dr. John Gottschalk sold the cabinet and many other dental artifacts in his large collection to the U-M dental school in 1992. The collection, paired with other artifacts the school had already begun saving, helped start the Sindecuse Museum in 1992. Gottschalk’s collection was so large he had started a museum in Ohio, but opted to sell his collection to the U-M dental school because he knew it would be properly preserved in the Sindecuse.

To see more of the Sindecuse Museum collections, go to www.sindecusemuseum.org/collectionsoverview

Dr. Elizabeth Van Turbergen

Sesquicentennial Mural Brightens Parking Structure

Even the Fletcher Street Parking Structure at the School of Dentistry is getting in on the dental school’s sesquicentennial. The school commissioned Sara Pulver, a multimedia artist in Lansing, Michigan, to create a dentistry-related mural to adorn the large blank wall on the back side of the parking structure elevator tower near the school’s new main entrance for patients. The new mural, painted on a canvas banner attached to the wall, shows a lips-and-teeth smile, a winding piece of dental floss, a dental scaler, an arty tube of toothpaste, a hand holding a toothbrush and the sesquicentennial logo. “When planning a design for this project, I wanted to bring some iconic dental imagery in, but with a bit of illustrative flair,” Pulver said. “Going to the dentist can be an intimidating thing! By using bright colors and whimsical details I hope to offset those feelings and create a fun, welcoming environment.” The 26-by-21-foot mural project, which will be displayed throughout 2025, was completed with support from the Ann Arbor Art Center. Ann Arbor townies, and dental students from years past, will remember that the concrete space was once used by the Top of the Park summer festival as a movie screen for films shown after dark atop the parking structure.

Facul t y Pro f ile

Dr. Marcia Campos: Energy and empathy fuel her teaching mission

It’s a simple office, one of many rooms along a faculty corridor in the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. Yet the bulletin board filled with cards and notes, the awards, and other decorative touches radiate a special connection between faculty member Dr. Marcia Campos and her students.

“Teaching is more than a career or profession to me,” Campos says. “It’s really a mission. I try to combine passion with compassion and empathy and with being very genuine with my students. It has given me a lot of things back. When you teach, you also learn.”

Campos joined the Department of Cariology, Restorative Sciences and Endodontics as a Clinical Associate Professor in August of 2020 after two previous tenures at the school, first as a postdoctoral fellow from 2008-09 and as an adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor from 2015-16. She has a strong background in the teaching, research and clinical realms of general dentistry and oral pathology.

In the four years since returning, Campos has forged a singular bond with students. Last spring, she received the Dr. Paul Gibbons Award, an honor given to a faculty member by the graduating DDS class. The award, which provides the opportunity to deliver a speech at commencement, recognizes exceptional teaching and mentorship. It is named for a late professor and alumnus who was a national expert in prosthodontics and cleft palate treatment.

In nominating Campos, students cited traits that demonstrate her passion for teaching and student welfare: “Dr. Campos possesses the best qualities of clinician, scientist, teacher, mentor, leader and a friend. … She exhibits empathy and kindness towards students and patients. … Her energy and excitement

filled the room … She goes above and beyond to make sure the students understand the concept and help them in the best way possible … Every encounter with Dr. Campos makes you feel seen, valued and important.”

Campos teaches several classroom courses along with instructing students as they treat patients in-clinic. She teaches classes on comprehensive care and cariology for firstyear students, along with a case presentation course for fourth-year students. Her student connection also includes involvement with the school’s Global Initiatives in Oral and Craniofacial Health, a program that gives students experience treating patients in several countries around the world. Campos has co-led an annual trip to Honduras for several years. She also is the faculty lead for the dental school’s Mental Health First Aid Program, established to support the wellbeing of students, staff and faculty.

The roots of Campos’ approach to dentistry grew during her high school years in her

native Brazil. She liked science and knew she loved working and communicating with people. Her hometown of São José dos Campos had two large universities and dentistry was the main medical program. She’d had good dentists as a child and she liked the challenge of dentistry.

The profession’s other positives quickly became evident. “The ways we can touch peoples’ lives with dentistry are phenomenal,” Campos says. “We work in such close proximity with our patients. You really need to build a level of trust. This drew me. With simple procedures we can change someone’s life.”

As she was completing her dentistry training, she also had her first taste of teaching. To help pay for her dental school courses, she taught high school classes at night in biology, chemistry and Portuguese. “I started to feel a calling,” she said.

She graduated from dental school in Brazil in 2001 and began private practice. She earned

a master’s and PhD in Brazil, and became involved in research as an oral pathologist, focusing on oral cancer. In 2008, she came to the U-M dental school for a year-long post-doctoral fellowship, then returned to Brazil and continued to develop her interest in teaching. “That is when I really found my passion,” Campos said. “You can be good at a lot of things. I was doing a good job in research, getting grants and everything. But I was not as fulfilled as when teaching.”

The next step in her career path came in 2015 when she and her husband, Bruno Cavalcanti, also a dentist whom she met in dental school, got a call from the U-M dental school. Cavalcanti, an endodontist, was hired as an assistant professor, and Marcia, who had just had their second child, returned to U-M as an adjunct clinical assistant professor from 2015-16.

Another career step presented itself in 2016, when the two were recruited by the University of Iowa dental school. They didn’t want to leave U-M, but in order to teach oral

pathology in this country, Campos would need to redo her residency program in the U.S. “It was too good of an opportunity to pass up,” she said.

The couple were faculty at UI for four years. Calvacanti was director of endodontics for undergraduates and Campos taught general dentistry and comprehensive care. In the end, Campos was doing so much general dentistry teaching – and loving it – that she decided not to do the pathology residency program at Iowa.

When the U-M dental school came calling again in 2020, she and Cavalcanti were happy to settle back into Ann Arbor with their two children (currently ages 13 and 11).

“I learned a lot in Iowa,” Campos says, “but coming back here was a really good feeling.”

Campos believes her empathetic approach to teaching comes in part from her family and in part from growing up in São José dos Campos, a cosmopolitan city in southeast Brazil about 60 miles from São Paulo. Her hometown is about six times the size of Ann Arbor, but the two have a similar diversity with many residents from around the world. “My mother and two of my sisters are social workers and I have witnessed, early on, how much social factors can impact someone’s life. My other sister is a psychologist, which also brought deeper humanistic concepts to my life and character-building.”

Among those concepts is knowing every one of U-M’s 400-plus dental students by name, underscored by a message a student sent last year. “Thank you for calling me by my name and making me feel seen every time you interacted with me,” the student told Campos. “This past year, I was having a really hard time adapting to a new reality as a (firstyear) student and you really helped me to not give up and to keep going.”

Another revealing story about Campos’ connection with students arose from a difficult moment,

Dr. Marcia Campos leads applause for graduating students at the 2024 dental school commencement. She was one of the speakers after the graduating DDS class selected her as the Dr. Paul Gibbons Award recipient for excellence in teaching.

when she had to fail a student in a clinic test case, just months before graduation.

“Sometimes you have to fail a student,” Campos explained. “But even then I try to say what you can do to improve and how to get better.” The two sat down and talked about how to overcome the problems the case presented.

Weeks later, on the day of commencement, the student’s father, a dentist himself, approached Campos. He expressed gratitude for how Campos mentored his daughter during a difficult moment. “The way that you did this,” he said, “you showed my daughter that failure was a part of learning. She learned so much in terms of how to overcome failure and how to treat patients.”

It’s tough love, but with a kind, caring and patient face. Campos says. “I wouldn’t do a good service to the student if I was just passing them and being nice all the time. I have to teach them. Sometimes the hard lessons, they are the very good ones.”

The awards and thank-you notes Campos receives are a testament to her personal way of teaching. “Awards are not something that I brag about, but it’s really an honor to be trusted,” she said. “As a professor, you deal with grading, lots of other things. There are politics in academics. There’s no way to avoid that. But this is what I call success.” ■

Faculty Notes

Dr. Nan Hatch, the Lysle E. Johnston Jr. Collegiate Professor of Orthodontics and chair of the Department of Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry, is the recipient of the 2025 Louise Ada Jarabak Memorial International Teachers and Research Award from the American Association of Orthodontists Foundation. She received the award at the AAO Annual Session in Philadelphia in April. The award is presented for significant contributions to orthodontic teaching and research. Candidates must be orthodontists and either a full or part-time teacher of orthodontics in a graduate program or be a department chair in an orthodontic program. They must be associated with orthodontic research, such as that of a primary investigator or a member of a group research program, and have published research. Dr. Hatch is a didactic and clinical instructor for dental students and orthodontic residents, and also serves as Research Director for the Orthodontic Division to guide orthodontic residents as they work towards their master’s degrees. She has mentored numerous orthodontic residents on their research, several of whom have won research awards from the AAO. Her research interests include basic and translational research in bone biology and the molecular etiology of craniofacial anomalies, as well as the development of biologic mediators of orthodontic tooth movement and retention.

Professor Emeritus Dr. James McNamara gave the keynote address at the 2025 Society of Educators James A. McNamara Educational Leadership Conference in April, as the lead-in to the Annual Session of the American Association of Orthodontists in Philadelphia. His presentation, “How Orthodontic Treatment Has Evolved During The Last 60 Years: A Personal Perspective,” chronicled his journey from primate research in his early career to working with experts around the world on craniofacial growth and the continually evolving orthodontic techniques that have become standards of the professions.

Dr. Theodora E. Danciu, Clinical Professor in the Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine at the School of Dentistry, has been named a 2025-26 Fellow for the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program. Hosted by the College of Medicine at Drexell University in Philadelphia, the ELAM program is the sole comprehensive initiative in North America designed to ready women for senior leadership opportunities in academic health institutions, including medicine, dentistry, public health, and pharmacy schools. Each year, roughly 100 candidates are selected through a competitive process to participate in the prestigious program. Dr. Danciu is the dental school’s Director of Engaged Learning and Assessment and she directs the Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology Biopsy Service. Her national-level contributions to dental education include presently serving as Chair of the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) Council of Faculties, and she leads the ADEA Domains of Competence Workgroup in revising predoctoral dental education competencies.

Faculty member Dr. Hom-Lay Wang received a national award for evidencebased research from the American Dental Association at its annual conference, SmileCon, held in New Orleans last fall. Wang is Collegiate Professor of Periodontics and Professor of Dentistry in the Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine. He was presented with the ADA’s Evidence-Based Dentistry Faculty Award for his research in advancing the understanding of periodontology and dental implants. The award is presented in association with the organization’s Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry, which collaborates with the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs to develop resources that help dentists integrate clinically relevant scientific evidence at the point of care. Wang joined the dental school perio department as an assistant professor in 1989 and was promoted to associate professor in 1997 and to professor in 2002. His periodontal and dental implant-related clinical research includes a focus on barrier membranes, bone-grafting and growth factors. Wang has served as director of the dental school’s graduate periodontal program for almost 30 years.

Dr. Nan Hatch

Dr. James McNamara

Dr. Theodora E. Danciu

Dr. Hom-Lay Wang

Faculty member Dr. Junying (Jayden)

Li received the 2025 Claude Baker Faculty Award from the American Academy of Fixed Prosthodontics (AAFP). The Baker award recognizes exceptional dental school junior faculty members in pre-doctoral fixed prosthodontic teaching. It was presented in February at the organization’s 74th annual meeting in Chicago. Dr. Li joined the dental school in 2019 as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Biologic and Materials Sciences & Prosthodontics. He previously was a Dentsply Sirona Implant Fellow in the department from 2017-18 and a clinical lecturer from 2018-19. As a clinician and researcher, he focuses on digital full-arch implant treatments and has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in top dental journals. He has received numerous awards previously, including the Emerging Leader 6 under 10 implant case competition from the Academy of Osseointegration in 2023. BMSP Department Chair Jan Hu said Li is the first faculty member from the dental school receive the Baker award since it was created in 2003.

“This is an exceptional honor for junior faculty, a national recognition for the exceptional contribution to Pre-doctoral Fixed Prosthodontics education,” she said.

Faculty member Dr. Tian Liang was selected for the 2025 cohort of John Haddad Young Investigator Awards by the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR). Liang is the Robert W. Browne Early Career Professor of Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry and Assistant Professor of Dentistry in the OPD Department. Liang and other early career investigators in the award cohort participated in the 2025 Advances in Mineral Metabolism (AIMM)-ASBMR Young Investigators' Meeting in April in Snowmass, Colorado, where they presented on their current research. Dr. Liang’s research is in tooth development and mineralization, focusing on the mineralization of dentin and enamel. He is also interested in ameloblast and odontoblast differentiation. He joined the dental school in 2024 after Dr. Liang a postdoctoral research fellowship in the laboratory of dental school faculty Dr. James Simmer and Dr. Jan Hu.

Dr. Geoffrey E. Gerstner, associate professor of dentistry, retired effective Jan. 1, 2025. He joined U-M as an assistant professor in 1992 and was promoted to associate professor in 1999. He taught undergraduate, predoctoral dental students, dental residents and graduate students. He chaired, co-chaired or directed 21 courses and lectured in 58 courses, receiving eight teaching awards from dental classes, dental student organizations and the dean. During his tenure, he developed standards in clinical education of temporomandibular disorder and orofacial pain as well as of obstructive sleep apnea assessments. Most recently, he developed an accredited mini-residency in dental sleep medicine, which provides practicing dentists with the ability to treat life-threatening sleep related breathing disorders. Gerstner’s research has focused on orofacial motor control and dysfunction.

Faculty member Dr. Margherita Fontana has been elected vice-president of the American Association for Dental, Oral and Craniofacial Research (AADOCR). The one-year term began in March and leads to the presidency of the national organization in two years. The membership of AADOCR elected Dr. Fontana, who is the Clifford Nelson Endowed Professor of Dentistry in the Department of Cariology, Restorative Sciences and Endodontics. After serving as vice-president for a year, Fontana will remain on the AADOCR Board of Directors for three consecutive annual terms as president-elect, president and immediate past president. This is the third time in the last six years that a U-M dental school faculty member has been chosen to lead AADOCR. Dr. Nisha D’Silva, the Donald A. Kerr Endowed Collegiate Professor of Oral Pathology in the dental school’s Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine, is currently president-elect and will be president in 2026-27. Dr. Jacques Nör, dean of the school, served as vicepresident from 2019-20, then as president from 2021-22.

Dr. Junying (Jayden) Li

Dr. Geoffrey E. Gerstner

Dr. Margherita Fontana

Dr. Tian Liang

Research Day Emphasizes How Science Improves Health and Changes Lives

Concern in the national higher education community over federal funding cuts for scientific research served as a backdrop for the annual Research Day held at the dental school Feb. 13. This year, 147 posters detailing a wide variety of research were submitted by the school’s students, postdoctoral trainees, staff and faculty.

Between morning and afternoon poster sessions at the Michigan League, a keynote address by former faculty member Dr. Russell Taichman and several awards were presented at Kellogg Auditorium at the dental school. Both Taichman and Dr. Vesa Kaartinen, the Dr. Roy H. Roberts Professor of Dentistry and Associate Dean for Research, said Research Day is a celebration of the impressive work being done in the dental school labs that is shaping the future of oral health and healthcare in general.

“We gather here at a time when science is being questioned in ways we haven’t seen in generations,” Kaartinen said. “But let me be clear: Science saves lives. Research finds ways to treat deadly diseases. Research improves the quality of life. These are not opinions; these are facts, demonstrated every day in our labs, clinics and communities.”

Taichman, now Chair of the Department of Basic and Clinical Translational Science at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in Boston, Mass., was previously a faculty member at the U-M School of Dentistry and served as Associate Dean for Research. In addressing the early-career trainees during his address, Taichman cited an expression attributed to President Jimmy Carter and

others – go out on a limb because that’s where the fruit is. “As you start your scientific careers,” he said, “it’s important to take on projects that you are passionate about but will have a high-yield of fruit long-term.”

“We need to keep at what we do,” he said. “And make sure that we promote the truth in all the things that we do. And the best way to examine the truth is by looking at it rigorously and examining it in an unbiased fashion. That’s what science is all about – trying to understand what our world is all about so we can treat human disease.”

Top award recipients include:

• Kelsey Gruber, a third-year dental student, received the SCADA Award (Student Competition for Advancing Dental Research and its Application) for her research, “Inhibition of Alkaline Phosphatase Alters Orthodontic Tooth Movement.” Faculty mentor: Nan Hatch.

Above: Faculty member Elizabeth Hatfield (far left) listens to Ryan Rezania, a firstyear DDS student, discuss his research on student preferences for multimedia learning experiences in their dental education. Hend Abulatifa (in green at right), a post-doctoral student in the Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine, discusses her research about the impact of skin cancer on the prevalence of periodontitis with Abdulmohsen Alanazi (far right), also a post-doctoral scholar.

Gruber will represent the school and present her research at the annual meeting and exhibition of the AADOCR in San Diego, California, in March 2026.

• Sarah Seohyun Chang, an undergraduate student in the lab of faculty member Marco Bottino, received the AADOCR Travel Award for attending the 2025 IADR/AADOCR annual meeting and exhibition in New York City in March, where she presented her research: “Modulation of Antimicrobial and Anti-Inflammatory Response Through Core-Shell Fibers Loaded with Metronidazole and Dexamethasone for Periodontal Therapy.” Faculty mentor: Marco Bottino

Kelsey Gruber

Sarah Seohyun Chang

Category 1: Clinical Research, Public Health, Behavioral and Educational Research

• 1st Place among DDS, Hygiene, Masters and Undergrad students – RayJ Jackson, a fourth-year dental student. Research Title: “Members of the LGBTQ+ Community and Oral Healthcare Utilization.” Faculty mentor: Marita Inglehart

• 1st Place among PhD Students (DDS/ PhD), Postdoctoral Trainees and Staff –Bruno Ribeiro Braga, a visiting scholar in the Department of Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry. Research Title: “Alveolar Bone Grafting with Mandibular Symphysis Bone: A Preliminary 3D Study.” Faculty mentor: Lucia Cevidanes

Category 2: Basic Science Research and Translational Science

• 1st Place among DDS, Hygiene, Masters and Undergrad students – Kelsey Gruber, a third-year dental student. Research Title: “Inhibition of Alkaline Phosphatase Alters Orthodontic Tooth Movement.” Faculty mentor: Nan Hatch

• 1st Place among PhD Students (DDS/ PhD) and Postdoctoral Trainees and Staff – Juliana Amorim dos Santos, a postdoctoral trainee in the Department of

Biologic and Materials Sciences & Endodontics. Research Title: “Novel Traces of Trigeminal Somatosensory Innervation in the Salivary Glands.” Faculty mentor: Isabelle Lombaert

Dr. Marcell Costa de Medeiros Dr. Joshua Emrick

Dental Hygiene Awards

• 1st Place Original Research Award – Vy Tran, Niebal Sukar and Manaal Zubair, fourth-year Dental Hygiene students. Research Title: “The Role of Prediabetes Risk Surveys and Chairside Glucose Testing in Michigan Dental Practices.” Faculty mentor: Iwonka Eagle

Other Research Day Awards

• The Janice E. Berry Prize for Excellence in Research was presented to Dr. Marcell Costa de Medeiros, a Research Investigator in the lab of faculty member Dr. Nisha D’Silva in the Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine. Costa de Medeiros was cited for his dedicated and passionate research into oral cancer, during which he demonstrates diligence to rigorous and complex research procedures.

• Dr. Joshua Emrick, Assistant Professor of Dentistry in the Department of Biologic and Materials Sciences and Prosthodontics, received the Distinguished Faculty Mentoring Award. Emrick was described as “an incredibly caring and dedicated mentor, committed to supporting trainees not only within his research laboratory but also across the Dental School and surrounding research communities at U-M.”

• Jennifer Linzmeier, Research Administrator in the Office of Research, received the Research Staff Recognition Award. Her hands-on approach to training, project management and problem-solving on the Contracts and Grants Team was cited as “invaluable in overcoming challenges, ensuring compliance, and facilitating the success of numerous research projects.”

A complete list of the 2025 Research Day Awards is posted on the Research Day webpage. ■

SPONSORED RESEARCH AWARDS

>$50,000 from October 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH AND OTHER FEDERAL AGENCIES

Purnima Kumar, (PI), Muhammad Saleh (co-I), National Institutes of Health, $675,684. Biogeography of the peri-implant microbial ecosystem in health and during transition to disease

David Kohn, U-M Principal Investigator, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)/National Institutes of Health, $1,099,970. Osteocytic mechanisms required for spatiotemporal control of bone quality

Marco Bottino, (PI), Renan Dal Fabbro (co-I), Research Agreement, Matregenix/Department of Defense, $599,999. Handheld, Contactless Device for Applying Antibacterial Nanofiber Matrix: A Portable

Solution for Treating Wounds in Remote Battlefields

Romesh Nalliah, (co-I), Michigan DHHS, $3,787,800. Michigan Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network (M-OPEN)

Livia Tenuta, (PI), Theodora Danciu (co-I), National Institutes of Health, $5,237,928. A multiscale approach to develop and apply fluoride efflux inhibitors to reverse oral dysbiosis and eliminate early childhood caries

FOUNDATIONS, INDUSTRY and OTHER AWARDS

Ling-Yu Liu, (PI) Joshua Emrick (co-I), Delta Dental Fund, $49,999. Defining the neural circuit of the jaw-opening reflex

Howard Hamerink, (PI), Mark Fitzgerald (co-I), Sarah Tomaka (co-I), Delta Dental Fund, $120,000. Victors for Veterans (CY 2025)

Romesh Nalliah, (co-I), CareQuest Institute for Oral Health, $132,708. Specifying a Trauma-Informed Continuum of Dental Care through Mixed Methods Research

Nan Hatch, (PI), Alesta Therapeutics B.V., $267,875. Initial TNAP deficient myoblast/ myotube cell culture studies

Dennis Fasbinder, (PI), Dentsply Sirona, Inc., $280,124. Clinical Study of a 3D Shaded Zirconia for Chairside CAD/CAM Restorations

Jennifer Linzmeier

DENTAL HYGIENE

Dental Hygiene 70 Years Ago

A Class of 1955 dental hygienist reflects on her education and how oral health has changed in patients over the years.

By Gerri (Mankowski) Carr

It was 1953 when I began my bachelor’s degree in dental hygiene education in the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. Our director, Dr. Dorothy Hard, was a formidable person, and when she walked into a room everyone automatically stood up. To say Dr. Hard ran the program like a military school could not be repudiated. As a result, my friends were Joanne McDonald and Betty Meagher, who bookended me as we carried on in alphabetical order, quite naturally.

Dr. Hard had one acceptable standard – hers. The pointed edges of our Bunting instruments (invented by Dr. Russell Bunting, a faculty member and former Dean who was also Dr. Hard’s husband) always pointed towards the hard tissue of the tooth as we worked using a fulcrum/rest finger. After polishing and flossing we dried every millimeter of the tooth as we re-checked it. Dr. Hard believed only a dry surface could be examined thoroughly. I do agree.

We worked standing up without masks or gloves. Our long sleeved white cotton uniforms were starched and ironed. We also wore white stockings, shoes and caps with the lavender stripes. It was a great day when scrubs were introduced.

Dr. Albert Richards taught roentgenography, as he insisted we refer to his class. He had no patience for any overlapped or blurred interproximals. And we, of course, developed our own X-rays in those dark little closets.

As there were only two schools educating dental hygienists in Michigan, we were in demand and salaries were at a premium. It was said that the two highest paid starting salaries upon graduation in 1955 were electrical engineers and dental hygienists, though the salaries of engineers were not stagnant as were ours. A typical starting salary for a hygienist was around $85-$100 a week. That doesn’t sound like much, but the average salary of a male in 1955 was $67.

Tuition was $90 a semester and 35 cents would buy you a hamburger, fries and a Coke at McDonald’s. You could get a lobster dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel for $3.25 and add the cheesecake for 50 cents. $100 a week went a long way.

As most of us went into dental practices as the first hygienists, we were introducing dental hygienists to our patients. Sometimes there was some resistance by a patient who was not accustomed to having

Gerri Mankowski is circled at far left in this DH Class of 1955 photo. Legendary program director Dorthy Hard is in the top row, far right.

anyone but their dentist peering into their mouth. Resistance to having hygienists treating a patient was quickly broken down in the field of dentistry. In 1955, teeth stained by tobacco from cigarettes, cigars or pipes were common. Also, because having one’s teeth cleaned was not a regular 6- to 9-month occurrence, the buildup of tartar (calculus) and plaque was the norm. The mouths of patients were not what we see today. Missing teeth, bleeding gums, amalgam fillings, bridges and removable partials were common, especially in male athletes before mouth guards. Those flippers with their front teeth were often seen on the trays where we kept our instruments. One would sometimes have to hold a wobbly tooth in place while scaling.

Since it was the time that Dr. Philip Jay and others were just introducing fluoride, decaying teeth were also prevalent.

Teaching the concept of daily flossing was foreign to many patients. We didn’t have the flossing aids of today, so wrapping the floss around those ring fingers, etc. was probably a lesson that fell on deaf ears for many patients.

The field of dental hygiene and dental health has come a long way as reflected in the beautiful smiles of adults today. Good work ladies, and gentlemen. Carry on.

About the Author

This year, as the University of Michigan School of Dentistry celebrates the 150 years since its founding, Gerri (Mankowski) Carr is celebrating the 70th anniversary of earning her Bachelor of Science degree from the school’s Division of Dental Hygiene.

From her home in Genoa Township, Michigan, about 30 miles north of Ann Arbor, Carr recently reminisced in writing about the days of her dental hygiene training and how Americans’ oral health has changed markedly since then.

After initially beginning work as a hygienist after graduation, Carr and her husband moved out of Michigan for his career and she paused hers. When the couple returned to Michigan a few years later, she worked over the next 25 years in various part-time hygienist roles in Dearborn, Livonia and Northville dental practices. Hygienists were in great demand so it was easy to find work. And the profession was advantageous in another way, allowing a flexible schedule for the mother of five as she raised her family.

In 1985, Carr left dental hygiene to pursue a lifelong interest in social work, earning a graduate degree that allowed her to practice psychiatric social work in an Ann Arbor health system. Her counseling included the areas of substance abuse, mental health and women in prison.

Carr looks back fondly on her dental hygiene education and work. She still has a dear friend, Betty (Meagher) Aschauer, from their dental hygiene class. Their 70-year-plus friendship is a lasting benefit of their time together in Dr. Dorothy Hard’s legendary, regimented program.

In Hard’s alphabetically arranged classroom, Mankowski and Meagher sat next to each other.

Gerri Carr

From Lagos to Ann Arbor: Nigerian student reaches her goal of earning a BSDH degree

Blessing Olakanmi’s long and winding path to a dental hygiene degree at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry is about more than just the distance from her native Nigeria. It’s about understanding the importance of a strong education and having the determination to overcome obstacles that stood in the way.

Olakanmi, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in dental hygiene, grew up near Lagos, Nigeria. Her family’s financial constraints meant she and her three siblings sometimes missed classes despite her parents’

determination that their children would get a good education. The uncertainty at times hindered her academic progress.

“My parents strove to send us to private schools, so we could get the best education possible, but it wasn't like they could afford it,” she said. “They were struggling to make it happen. There were times they couldn’t pay the fees. They couldn’t get us the right books or the right clothes to be in classes. And because of that, we’d get sent out of class sometimes. But even then, they made sure we studied at home.”

Though Olakanmi went through graduation ceremonies with her high school class in 2012, the missed schooling meant she had to retake several exams later to finally earn the official diploma. After securing it in 2016, she struggled a bit to figure out what to study next. She had always wanted a career in medicine and was particularly interested in neurosurgery but didn’t have the grades to get into one of those programs.

Searching the Internet one day, she saw information about a dental assisting program in Lagos and decided to enroll. Her father had always insisted his children brush their teeth twice a day, and that emphasis on brushing made her curious about the Blessing Olakanmi

importance of dental care. “So I thought, OK, that sounds like something I've always been secretly interested in. Maybe I should give it a try.”

She completed the three-year training program and an internship at a teaching hospital and then worked for a few years in dental assisting and office administration. In the meantime, her father had moved to Michigan, and Olakanmi decided to follow him. She thought dental hygiene might be a good path for her and had discovered from online research that U-M’s program was highly rated. But she knew her education in Nigeria would not be adequate for admission, so she enrolled in a community college near where her father was living in southwest Michigan. When signing up for classes, to make sure she had all the prerequisites needed for U-M’s program, she worked closely with Lisa Dodge, the Dental Hygiene Division’s senior administrative assistant.

“She was so helpful. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here,” Olakanmi said.

After being accepted and enrolling at the dental school, she found the classes and training to be challenging and rewarding. She especially appreciates the support she has received from faculty and the opportunity for one-to-one meetings with teaching staff, something that was not available in Nigeria. “The professors here try their best to teach us in different ways because we all learn differently,” she said. “The university has resources available everywhere. We just need to find them and utilize them, and that has helped me a lot.”

Olakanmi said she has made lifelong friends at Michigan. “My classmates have been a huge part of my journey. They’ve supported me, and I've supported them. I like that we can reach out to each other even if we’re struggling. This is not a journey you can take by yourself. You need the support of others, and you need to support others, too.”

Patient care has been fulfilling. “As a student, you feel like you're learning, and you might be doing some things wrong. But then when you’re done, and the patient says, ‘You did great, you were kind, you were gentle,’ that just gives me joy. When they say thank-you and they smile, that encourages me.”

As she approached graduation, Olakanmi looked back with pride in herself and gratitude to the dental school for what she has been able to accomplish. “There have been opportunities that I never knew existed. There have been times of lows, but it’s been great overall. Finally, after so many years of high school I can now say I have a degree.” Olakanmi plans to move to Maryland, where her father and one of her siblings now live. She has a job lined up in a private dental practice there. Eventually, she hopes to get a master’s degree in health administration.

Having struggled in Nigeria with her own education, Olakanmi wants to create a smoother path for other young people in that country. To do so, she has already established

the Bold Smile Foundation using money she earned from a part-time retail job. The foundation, administered by her mother, helps pay school fees for children under age 18 whose parents can’t afford them. The foundation has assisted 18 children so far, but she hopes it will grow to help many more.

The foundation is one way Olakanmi is working to fulfill her most important goal –to strive for self-improvement and give what she can to others. “I never want to stop growing, and I always want to give,” she said.

Blessing Olakanmi concentrates as she treats a patient in clinic this spring.

Lisa Dodge Draws Praise as 27-year Tenure Ends

Lisa Dodge, the longtime administrative assistant for the Division of Dental Hygiene, was feted at a retirement reception on April 16 for her dedication and devotion to students and her “wizardry” in organizational skills for faculty and staff.

The event, attended by about 100 people, played on themes from the Harry Potter books and movies since Dodge’s three daughters were avid fans of the series, which meant over the years she spent many hours waiting in lines with them for the release of popular books, DVDs and various accessories.

Jennifer Cullen, director of the Dental Hygiene Division, opened the program in praise of Dodge’s devotion to the program. “For 27 years, Lisa has been the true keeper of our castle – the one who truly makes the magic happen, ensuring that every student, faculty member and visitor felt welcomed, supported and maybe even a little spellbound by how much love Lisa pours into this place.”

Dodge was often the first person DH students met in the application process and

after joining the program. “It’s the deep and genuine care she takes in getting to know each student’s story,” Cullen said. “She doesn’t just open doors; she helps students believe they belong here.”

She also cited Dodge’s ability to navigate and manage the labyrinth of class schedules, internal and external rotations, clinic

assignments, and final exams. “Her Excel pivot tables are legendary. Her attention to detail is remarkable and her institutional knowledge is unmatched,” Cullen said.

Other speakers included former division directors Wendy Kerschbaum and Janet Kinney, and former faculty members Anne Gwozdek and Darlene Jones. Kerschbaum joined Dodge in thanking Dodge’s husband, daughters and other family members for the countless times when unexpected extra work meant she was late getting home at the end of the day or working extra hours to finish an important project.

Dodge called the people she has worked with and for “the dream team” and she especially thanked the students who came to the event. She enjoyed helping students because, she said, “There is no greater joy than to watch dreams come true.”

“It’s hard to say goodbye to a job you love and the people who make it so enjoyable,” Dodge said. “I’m so fortunate.”

DH Program Enrollment Reflects Growing Demand

Student enrollment is up, to the class maximum of 40, for bachelor’s degree students in the Division of Dental Hygiene for the 2025-26 term.

It’s good news, marking a pivotal upswing in enrollment and signaling renewed momentum for the 103-year-old program.

The increase comes at a critical time, as the dental workforce continues to feel the impact of a nationwide shortage of dental hygienists. Even with projections of above average growth of 9 percent in the next 10 years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects over 16,000 job openings annually. The shortage is attributed to a variety of factors, including the lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw many hygienists retire or not return to practice, and challenges with the dental hygiene education pipeline.

In response to the shortage, over the last two years the division has re-envisioned its recruitment strategies, strengthened partnerships with community colleges to create smoother transfer pathways, and expanded outreach to current U-M undergraduates who are still exploring academic and career options.

“These efforts reflect a shared commitment to addressing workforce needs while preparing the next generation of dental hygiene professionals with the knowledge and skills to excel in contemporary dental hygiene practice,” said Division Director Jennifer Cullen. “Welcoming more students not only helps increase the number of hygienists, but it also expands the division’s impact, ensuring that more hygienists are prepared to be leaders in shaping the future of oral healthcare.”

A Dental Hygiene student treats a patient in a dental school clinic earlier this year.

STUDENTS Student Notes

Dr. Korey Searle (DDS 2022, MS orthodontics 2025) received the 2025 “Resident of the Year” award from the Journal of Clinical Orthodontics (JCO). He was selected over 16 other students nominated by dental schools around the United States and Canada in a two-stage, months-long competition judged for clinical excellence. Each nominee submitted two letters of recommendation and a personal essay. Nominees were then given the materials from an unpublished case and asked to write a complete treatment plan, including all possible alternatives, within a two-week time frame. Three JCO board members narrowed the 17 nominees down to 12 finalists in December. Each of the finalists then submitted a complete report for a case he or she had worked on. A wider panel of JCO board members voted for the winner. Searle’s mentors are faculty members Drs. Kim-Berman and Thomas Robinson.

James Bennett III, a Class of 2026 DDS student, received the inaugural Karen Burgess Memorial Scholarship from the Michigan Dental Association earlier this year. Burgess was CEO and Executive Director of the MDA for nine years. She died of metastatic breast cancer in 2023 several months before her previously announced retirement date. The MDA cited Bennett’s values of leadership, diversity and inclusion that similarly guided Burgess during her career with the MDA and earlier with the American Dental Association. MDA noted Bennett’s involvement with the U-M chapter of the Student National Dental Association and at its national level, as well as with the student American Dental Education Association chapter. MDA cited Bennett’s current commitment to, and future plans for, mentoring early-career dentists and providing other leadership initiatives in the dental profession.

Second-year DDS student Xiaojia (Nicholas) Zhang is one of 32 University of Michigan graduate students named to the 2025 Dow Sustainability Fellows Program. Administered by the university’s Graham Sustainability Institute, the program fosters sustainability leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration. Each fellow receives project funding, professional development opportunities, and hands-on experience collaborating with external organizational partners. Fellows are chosen through a competitive nomination and application process designed to attract and recognize top talent from across U-M’s academic disciplines. The 2025 Dow Fellows were assigned to one of seven organizations around Michigan and the country that are focused on various sustainability issues.

Smiling Students Give Kids a Smile

Dr. Korey Searle

Xiaojia Zhang

James Bennett III

About 135 student volunteers pose for a group photo at the conclusion of the 2025 Give Kids a Smile Clinic in late March. About 80 children ages 4-14 from around southeast Michigan were brought to the dental school by their parents and guardians for dental care during this annual event. Beyond fixing cavities, taking x-rays and applying sealants to protect teeth, U-M dental students also made a point of having fun with the kids to show them there is nothing to be scared of when “going to the dentist.”

Class of 2025 Graduation

DDS parents who are alumni are invited to assist with the hooding of their children during commencement. This year seven students were hooded by their fathers:

• Elise DeConinck by Dr. Derik DeConinck (DDS 1995, MS endodontics 1998)

• Clayton Ford by Dr. Douglas Ford (DDS 1990)

• Laura Hanselman by Dr. Mark Hanselman (DDS 1987)

• Jacob Herremans by Dr. Thomas Herremans (DDS 1996)

• Jason Sassack by Dr. Walter Sassack (DDS 1980)

• Abhay Vora by Dr. Mayank Vora (DDS 2001)

• Sarah Wojcik by Dr. Michael Wojcik (DDS 1998)

1. DDS grad Benjamin Reiter wore the most distinctive, dentistry-related tie.

2. DDS grad Laura Hanselman beams as she is hooded by her father Dr. Mark Hanselman and Associate Dean for Students Dr. Renée Duff.

3. Dean Jacques Nör and orthodontics MS graduate Camille Herzog pause on stage for the event photographer.

4. Sophia Timban, who earned a master’s degree in Oral Health Sciences, stops on stage to hug her mentor, faculty member Dr. Romesh Nalliah.

5. Dr. Todd Ester, Associate Dean for Well-being and People, stands to shake hands with DDS graduate Chiemeziem Nwachukwu, who stopped as he crossed the stage to give a thank-you hug to the faculty member.

Watch Related Videos

Video highlights of 2025 Commencement: https://myumi.ch/g33nW

Video of entire ceremony: https://myumi.ch/XyyXd

Video with comments from graduates: https://myumi.ch/jJJeZ

More photos on Flickr: https://myumi.ch/w999A

6. Faculty members Drs. Carlos González-Cabezas and Margherita Fontana congratulate DDS grad Matthew Woods on the steps of Hill Auditorium after the ceremony.

7. DDS grad Jacob Herremans and his father Dr. Thomas Herremans embrace on stage.

8. BSDH graduate Khadijah Mohammad’s son Hamdan wore a miniature-sized cap and gown to celebrate his mother’s commencement day. Khadijah took a year off from her DH studies when Hamdan was born, then returned to finish her degree. White lettering on Hamdan’s mortarboard said it all: “Mommy DID IT!”

CEW+ Annual Scholarships and Awards

Four School of Dentistry students were named CEW+ Scholars for 2024-25 by the University of Michigan organization now in its 54th year of providing scholarships supporting the education of women and underserved students at the university. CEW+, formerly known as the Center for the Education of Women, named 13 Fellows and 100 Scholars who received awards averaging $8,300 for tuition and living expenses. This year’s four Dental School recipients, who continue a longstanding tradition of scholarship support from CEW+ to the school, are:

Leanne Cross, a dental hygiene student in the AS-MS degree program, was named a Margaret Dow Towsley Scholar. An experienced dental hygienist with over 16 years of practice in the field, she is furthering her education with the goal of advancing her skills and making a greater impact on patient care. CEW+ said her initiative in seeking additional education and mentoring her dental practice teams in the offices where she has worked has elevated patient care standards. “Her passion for dentistry and leadership abilities make her an exceptional candidate for further academic and professional growth,” CEW+ said in making the scholarship announcement.

Rachel Miller, a dental hygiene student in the AS-MS degree program, was named the Amy Mecozzi Cho and Lawrence Cho Family Scholar. With a foundation of many years of work as a dental hygienist, she branched into a related field at a dental software firm. It has led to a new career track where she will use her additional degrees to help hygienists better understand classifying periodontal disease, treat the disease, and, in turn, better educate their patients. She also to teach college students about dental hygiene as an ever-changing landscape of growth.

Khadijah Mohammad, who graduated with her BSDH in May, received the Jane and Bill Bloom Scholarship. She was cited for consistently prioritizing her patients’ needs and demonstrating compassion in her work with elderly patients, autistic patients, and those with mental illness. CEW+ noted her work history demonstrating dedication to caring for others, especially through her experience as a caregiver for individuals with special needs. CEW+ said her resilience and commitment to education was demonstrated in 2022 when she faced a major life transition after becoming a mother. She paused her studies to focus on her newborn son but returned to her program with renewed determination a year later.

Kinjal Mavani, a student in the Internationally Trained Dentist Program who graduated this spring, was named a Margaret Dow Towsley Scholar. CEW+ cited her “tenacious” pursuit of education and a dental career, beginning at a rural dental college in India where she studied and participated in outreach camps in an underserved area. She was exposed to profound disparities in access to dental care, as well as the transformative impact of providing essential dental services to marginalized communities, which ignited her commitment to leverage her skills and knowledge for the betterment of society. CEW+ noted that she has excelled during her transition to and success in the dental school’s ITDP while solo parenting her five-year-old son for a large portion of the program.

Leanne Cross

Rachel Miller

Khadijah Mohammad

Kinjal Mavani

Alumni, Faculty Receive MDA Awards

Several U-M dental school alumni and faculty members were among the recipients of the annual awards presented by the Michigan Dental Association at its Annual Session in Detroit in April.

Dr. Riley Schaff (DDS 2017), who practices in Ann Arbor, was recognized with two awards. He received the Dr. Matt Uday New Dentist Leadership Award. MDA cited his already growing list of contributions to the profession, dating to his days as a dental student. He is a member of the MDA Insurance and Financial Group Committee on Endorsed Services; a member and current chair of the New Dentist Committee; and a member of the Dental PAC Board of Governors. He is a past graduate of the MDA’s Leadership Exploration And Development (LEAD) program, and serves as a delegate to the MDA House, on the ADA 9th District delegation, and on the ADA Council on Communication. Dr. Schaff also received the MDA’s Dental Faculty Award for the University of Michigan, where he is an adjunct professor in the dental school’s Department of Cariology, Restorative Sciences and Endodontics, and is a member of the school’s Alumni Board of Governors. MDA recognized his teaching and mentoring skills in providing clinical instruction to third- and fourth-year dental students. He was cited for high standards and his ability to interact with students with respect and patience, ensuring a conducive learning environment.

Dr. Denise Polk (DDS 1984) received the Public Service Award. She has practiced in Flint, Michigan, since graduating from U-M. Over her career, she has served as a respected educator, as a leader in the Genesee District Dental Society, as an access volunteer, and in other professional and community capacities. Since 1988, she has served in various roles in the Mott Community College Dental Assisting program, most recently as the dental programs chair, educating and shaping the careers of hundreds of dental assistants. As a leader in organized dentistry, Dr. Polk has served as secretary and as president of Genesee District, as a delegate to the MDA House, and as a member of the peer review and ethics committees. Her work with underserved populations in Flint includes volunteering at several Mission of Mercy events, where she acted as a volunteer dentist and triage lead. Most recently, her efforts brought the MOM to Dort Event Center in Flint, where she served as the local lead. She is also an organizer of the Stuff Your Stocking children’s event at Mott.

Dr. Jessica Rickert (DDS 1975) , of Traverse City, received the Public Relations Award. A member of the Prairie Band Pottawatomi Nation, she was the country’s first female American Indian dentist when she graduated from U-M. Now retired from the practice of dentistry, she continues to speak on diversity issues at conferences and educational institutions around the country. A founding board member of the Society of American Indian Dentists, she emphasizes the need to improve dental care and education for all ages of American Indian children so that they have a strong foundation for continuing into higher education and applying to dental schools or other professional schools. She is a frequent author of articles, including dental columns published by 14 tribes and American Indian Centers. Dr. Rickert has served as a consultant on diversity committees with the MDA and private industry. In her role as an adviser to Interlochen Public Radio, she has helped develop Anishinaabe radio programming, featuring Great Lakes American Indian news. She has received numerous state and national awards and has been inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.

Michelle Spencer (BSDH 2017), a Dental Hygiene faculty member at Macomb Community College and Oakland Community College, received the Allied Dental Professional Educator Award. She was instrumental in the development of the Macomb program from the ground up, planning, developing, and guiding the CODA accreditation process for her facility. A resident of White Lake, Michigan, she currently serves there not only in her full-time faculty role but also as the interim program director. She has served as a capstone adviser at the U-M dental school and is active in the Michigan Dental Hygienists’ Association, where she has held various leadership roles, including trustee, vice president, and president.

Dr. Riley Schaff

Dr. Denise Polk

Dr. Jessica Rickert

Michelle Spencer

Dr. Vince Benivegna (DDS 1990) received the Donated Dental Outstanding Volunteer Dentist Award. He practices at Mid-Michigan Oral Surgery with offices in East Lansing, Grand Ledge and Charlotte. He began as a Donated Dental Services volunteer when the program originated in 1995. Since then, he has treated 80 patients, donating more than $160,000 in care. The MDA cited his passion for helping the patients, promoting the program to his colleagues, especially while MDA president, and frequently asking coordinators to send him more DDS patients.

Alumni Notes

Last October, Dr. William Freccia (DDS 1976) was invited back to the Republic of South Korea where he was stationed in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He and about 25 other members of the Korea Defense Veterans Association were the guests of the South Korean government as part of the annual Revisit Korea Program. The group toured military installations, the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, and other sites in and round Seoul. Freccia, a retired-but-still-consulting endodontist from North Carolina, presented endo lectures to Army dentists in a clinic at Camp Humphreys and to residents at the dental school at Seoul National University. A West Point graduate, Freccia was stationed in Korea from January 1968 to February 1969 as commander of a HAWK missile unit that guarded the large U.S .airbase at Osan against attack by North Korean aircraft. After returning to the U.S., Freccia took advantage of a miliary educational program to earn his DDS at U-M, becoming a military dentist for several years before retiring from the Army to go into private endodontics practice in North Carolina. The South Korean government sponsors the revisit program “to express gratitude to Korean War veterans from 22 UN allied nations and build their pride by allowing them to witness how Korea enjoys peace and prosperity thanks to their noble sacrifices and dedication.”

Dr. Maria McMullin (U-M 2003), who practices in Monroe, Michigan, received the Donated Dental Rising Star Volunteer Dentist Award. The MDA noted that she has been a Donated Dental Service volunteer since 2018, when she reached out to the program stating she wanted to help. She recently finished treating her fourth patient. Dr. McMullin and her staff routinely express consideration and concern about this vulnerable population, their medical fragility, and long-term ability to be functional and stable, incorporating these factors into treatment scheduling and planning.

Noam Gannot (PhD 2024), a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, was one of just 10 University of Michigan doctoral students to be recognized with a Distinguished Dissertation Award from the Rackham Graduate School for 2024. Gannot was a student in the Oral Health Sciences program at the U-M dental school from 2019-24, working also as a graduate student research assistant in the Life Sciences Institute lab of Dr. Peng Li. Her dissertation, “A Neural Control Circuit for Cough-Like Defensive Behaviors in Mice,” was judged to be one of the 10 “truly exceptional dissertations” at U-M. Faculty who have served as chairs of dissertation committees nominate outstanding students who have completed their dissertations. These nominations are reviewed by a faculty panel and then read closely by postdoctoral fellows who are members of the Michigan Society of Fellows, an interdisciplinary community of outstanding scholars. Gannot’s Dissertation Committee members were dental school faculty members Peng Li, Nisha D’Silva and Joshua Emrick, and Roger Cone, director of the U-M Life Sciences Institute.

Dr. Vince Benivegna

Noam Gannot

Dr. Maria McMullin

William Freccia and his daughter Kristin at the DMZ between North and South Korea.

Dr. D. Omar Watson (DDS 2001), an oral and maxillofacial surgeon practicing in Midlothian, Virgina, was elected as a Fellow of the International College of Dentists last fall. A native of Grand Rapids, Watson followed his DDS degree from U-M by completing an OMFS residency at Detroit Receiving Hospital of the Detroit Medical Center and also obtaining a medical degree at Wayne State University School of Medicine, with an internship in General Surgery. He practices at Virginia Oral and Facial Surgery in its Midlothian and Richmond offices. The ICD admits fellows based on outstanding professional achievement, integrity, leadership and meritorious service. About 350 dentists were inducted last fall, joining 6,000 membes in the U.S. and 12,000 around the world in 138 countries.

Dr. Jennifer Xu (MS Orthodontics 2024) received the 2025 Thomas M. Graber Award of Special Merit from the American Association of Orthodontics for her master’s thesis, “Mid-palatal Suture Assessment with Intraoral Ultrasonography Imaging.” Her mentor was Dr. Marilia Yatabe, Clinical Assistant Professor of Dentistry in the Department of Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry. The award, and a lecture by Xu, were presented in April during the AAO’s 2025 Annual Session in Philadelphia. Xu practices in Santa Clara, California, at Silicon Valley Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics. During her residency at U-M, she received the Dr. James A. McNamara Endowed Orthodontic Student Scholarship and the Richard Johnson Endowed Orthodontic Student Fellowship.

Dr. Jessica Rickert (DDS 1975) of Traverse City, Michigan, was included as part of a special new dentistry exhibit at the Grand Rapids Children’s Museum early this year through the end of May. The Mitten Kids Dental Exhibit allowed children to role-play as dentists and patients, to act out dental procedures, to explore dental tools and X-Rays, and to clean the teeth of a puppet patient. The display included an immersive giant mouth for brushing and flossing away sugar bugs. The creative displays make learning about oral health engaging and will ease fears about dental visits and will inspire future careers in dentistry. The exhibit also included key figures in the history of dentistry, explaining Rickert’s unique history as the first female American Indian dentist when she graduated from U-M. A member of the Prairie Band Pottawatomi Nation, Rickert continues her longstanding advocacy around the country for better dental care and more American Indian dentists. The exhibit was sponsored by Mitten Kids Dentistry & Orthodontics in Grand Rapids and Caledonia, with support from the Michigan Dental Association Foundation and the West Michigan Dental Foundation.

Dr. D. Omar Watson

Dr. Jennifer Xu

Alumni Profile: The Peter and Donna Rick Family

Accepting a dinner invitation to the Spring Lake home of Peter and Donna Rick means joining an atmosphere that helps define the term “close-knit family.” Sitting around a long dining room table with the eight members of their immediate family, you quickly learn that the banter is non-stop, the laughter is contagious and the family stories are weighted heavily in favor of dentistry.

This is a family with five dentists – both parents and three of their four children –all trained by the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. The dentistry lineup looks like this:

• Dr. Peter Rick, Sr. – Undergraduate studies at U-M followed by a DDS in 1989. He began practicing as an associate in the Grand Haven area along Lake Michigan for a year, then bought a practice of his own in 1990. He built and maintained Grand Haven Family Dentistry until retiring near the end of 2023.

• Dr. Donna Rick – After starting college at Central Michigan for two years, she transferred to the U-M dental school and earned her bachelor’s degree in Dental Hygiene in 1984. She returned to the dental school and completed her DDS in 1989. That same year she opened Fruitport Family Dentistry, where she continues to practice, just nine miles from Peter’s practice.

• Dr. Chelsea Klipfel – Attended U-M for undergraduate studies and earned her DDS in 2017. After graduating, for three years she alternated between her parents’

practices, before joining her mother’s practice full-time. She purchased the practice from her mother in 2021.

• Dr. Peter Rick, Jr. – Attended U-M for undergraduate and earned his DDS in 2020. He joined his father’s practice and purchased it in 2022.

• Dr. Keon Rick – Received undergrad degree from Hope College in Holland, Mich., then earned his DDS from U-M in 2024. He practices at Hackley Community Care, a comprehensive community clinic offering a variety of healthcare services at several locations in Muskegon County. He is also an associate at a private practice one day a week.

Collectively, the six Ricks have had 38 years of educational experience at the University of Michigan.

The family bond with dentistry also extends back to Peter Sr.’s late mother, Iris Rick, who earned her Dental Hygiene certificate from the U-M dental school in 1949. She worked as a hygienist in Saginaw for several decades, helping found the Saginaw Valley DH association and retaining her DH license for 64 years.

The Ricks’ other child, Noah, considered dentistry but opted to earn two undergraduate degrees from U-M – one in mechanical engineering and the other in art and design. After several years of working in the boat manufacturing industry, he is now working on his MBA degree from Indiana University. “Our joke in this house,” Donna said, “is that we have five tooth engineers and one mechanical engineer.” Or as Chelsea puts it in regard to Noah: “Five dentists and one who is way smarter.”

Even the spouses of the Ricks’ two children who are married have dentistry connections. Peter Jr.’s wife Liz worked as an assistant at Donna’s practice for several years before her career switched to audiology. The family of Chelsea’s husband, Doug Klipfel, included his great uncle, the late Dr. Richard Charlick, who earned his DDS at U-M in 1959 and taught at the dental school for 25 years while practicing in nearby Brighton, Michigan, for 57 years.

So when all eight family members sit around the dining room table, which is often, or when they go to the family cottage Up North, also a frequent occurrence, stories involving dentistry and the family dental practices are never far from the conversation. While other U-M dental school alumni families may have more dentists if uncles, aunts and distant cousins are counted over several generations, the Ricks must be one of the few U-M families with five dentists in just two successive generations.

Noah Rick

Left: All five dentists in the Rick Family attended the 2025 Chicago Dental Society Midwinter Meeting in February. Here they posed at a reception for U-M dental school alumni sponsored by the school’s Alumni and Development Office. From left: Peter Jr., Donna, Peter Sr., Chelsea and Keon.

Origin stories

As the patriarch of this string of family dentists, Peter Sr. says his interest in the profession dates to his childhood dentist in Saginaw. Dr. George Williams, (U-M DDS 1949) would always greet Peter with variations of the same theme: “Peter, you are my favorite patient. I am so glad you came in. You are just a great kid, you are just my favorite patient.” Peter heard that line a lot because from the time he was 4 or 5 he had a lot of cavities and, thus, a lot of visits to Dr. Williams. “I loved to see him. I really thought I was his favorite patient. We went to the same church and he was always very positive. He was not the old 1940s dentist who would say, ‘Shut up, kid, and sit down and open your mouth.’ He was always very uplifting.”

Based on those friendly encounters, Peter recalls wanting to be a dentist as early as age 5. Dr. Williams was helpful and supportive as Peter grew up and asked questions about dentistry and dental school. Fast forward to Peter’s third year of dental school after he had gained experience in the school’s pediatric clinic and realized dentists need a way to make kids unafraid of the dentist. It had been several years since he had talked to Dr. Williams, so Peter decided to call him with an update.

“I said, ‘Dr. Williams, I’m a third-year dental student now. I’m getting married this summer. And I’m mad as hell at you.’ And you could just hear the air leave him. And

he asked why. And I said, ‘For 24 years, I thought I was your favorite patient. But now I realize you told that to every damn kid there was.’ And he belly-laughed like you wouldn’t believe.” Kindness had created a dentist.

For Donna, who grew up in Manistee, Michigan, dental hygiene was presented as a career option in a science class her senior year of high school. A hygienist advised: “If you’d like to be in the medical field and you are looking at raising a family and making a decent living and having great hours and helping people, then this would be a great profession for you to consider.” It sounded like a good option, but Donna had always hated dental appointments, so instead she investigated medical technology, an emerging career that was popular with several of her friends at CMU.

“But the first day I looked under a microscope, I couldn’t do it. And I said, oh no, I need another profession,” she recalls. The first alternative she thought of was dental hygiene, despite being among those who disliked going to the dentist. “I said, OK, I’m going to go into that profession and I’m going to prove to people that it doesn’t have to be that bad.”

After transferring to U-M, part of her financial aid package for her two years of DH was the opportunity to work for various faculty members in their research labs. Their encouragement not only helped her through the dental hygiene program, but they also bolstered her confidence by urging her to continue on to obtain her DDS. She was accepted into dental school while still a DH student with the proviso that she must first ace a couple of prerequisite courses that could be taken at the local community college. While she took those courses over the next year, she also worked as a hygienist at the Ann Arbor dental offices of various

faculty she had met at the dental school. That experience in dental practices and the connections she had made with faculty while a DH student helped make for a smooth transition into and during dental school.

Peter and Donna started dating in the fall of their first year in dental school and were married between their junior and senior years, one of several classmate-couples who were married in the Class of 1989. Their dating and marriage meant that they basically spent their four years of dental school studying together. When graduation arrived, they knew they wanted to head to the western shore of Michigan. They chose opportunities in the coastal population center comprised of Grand Haven, Spring Lake, Fruitport and Muskegon. They set up individual general dentistry practices and located their home in the middle between Peter’s practice in Grand Haven and Donna’s in Fruitport.

Children extend the family profession

Long before the next generation of Ricks decided on dentistry and earned their DDS degrees (or mechanical engineering in Noah’s case), all four children were being immersed in dentistry by frequently visiting their parents’ offices. And it started at an early age. Donna remembers the graciousness of her patients when she would bring baby Chelsea to the office. Once the baby’s nap was over and the hungry cries started, Donna recalls her patients saying, “‘Hey, your kid’s crying, go take care of her. I’ll wait for you.’ And they would.”

As the children grew up, they took on various helper duties in both offices, including basic housekeeping and clean-up tasks, regularlyscheduled water line cleanings, staffing the front desk, mouthguard clinics, and eventually assuming the role of dental assistants.

All the while, Peter Sr. says his career message to his children was, “Don’t do what Mom and Dad do. Do what you want to do.” As the oldest child, Chelsea was the first to

When Keon (center) graduated in 2024, his parents were on stage to hood their son as part of the dental school tradition. Afterward, Peter Jr. (left) and Chelsea (right) donned their cap and gowns as well to help illustrate the family’s new set of five dentists in the same immediate family.

decide on whether to follow her parents and she echoes their open-ended encouragement.

“They always told us not to go into dentistry just because they were dentists. They told us to go find our own path.”

For Chelsea, dentistry just made sense. “I was always at their offices – helping, working, experiencing dentistry,” she said. “I wanted to be in a medical field. I did all the science projects in school. I had wanted to be an emergency room doctor, but then I realized that in dentistry you have a unique relationship with patients that you don’t get in medicine. If you have to go to the ER you don’t know your physician. Or in primary care, you go to the doctor mostly because you are sick or it is maybe just once a year. In dentistry, you become a part of somebody’s life and see them twice a year, or more, and not just when they are sick. You are watching them go through life and become a family. It is just a really interesting way to be a part of the community and still be in a medicalrelated field.”

And then, she adds, there was that other crucial family advantage: “I had a job lined up after dental school, so that made the decision a little easier.”

Peter Jr. said he, too, considered medicine and dentistry, with dentistry winning out for various reasons. “I love working with my hands,” he said. “I love the social aspects and talking to people. It’s fun to get to know people. I didn’t want to work for some hospital or a company. I wanted to work for myself and build things with my own hands and do the engineering aspects of dentistry.”

The siblings remember how much they liked listening to their parents talk about dentistry when they arrived home at the end of the day. Often the kids would sit around a table and listen as their Mom and Dad debriefed each other about various cases, successes and problems they encountered with their patients that day. The caring way their parents talked about their patients left an impression. As did the phone calls their Dad made to patients each night to check on how they were feeling after that day’s particular procedure.

“It was cool because you had your parents home for dinner all the time,” Peter Jr. remembers. “They would talk about they had a great case that day. It was kind of cool to see that they would take work home with them, but at the same time they didn’t have

to take work home with them.”

As the youngest sibling, Keon took note of the discussions about careers that his sister and brothers had gone through. He considered biomedical engineering and the idea of a medical field, perhaps something in the prosthetics area. Noah was by then well into his mechanical engineering studies and shared with Keon what was involved in that field, things like computer-based software and other CAD-CAM technologies. “I hate sitting at a computer,” Keon said, “so that stopped the engineering idea real quick.”

As U-M dental school alumni themselves, Drs. Donna and Peter Rick joined the parental tradition of hooding son Keon during his commencement in May 2024.

As Keon considered his career options, he continued to assist in his dad’s office. One day a local orthodontist, joking to Peter that no kid likes to work for his dad, invited Keon to assist in the orthodontics office. To Peter’s surprise, the next day Keon took up the offer and spent several summers experiencing dentistry from an orthodontist’s point of view. That outside-the-family experience helped Keon confirm that dentistry was the way he wanted to go.

“Ultimately, I liked dental because it was in my mind a true healthcare,” he said. “We see patients when they are healthy and try to keep them healthy. We give them tips and help even when they are healthy. I felt like medicine is more of sick care and I didn’t really want to do that for my entire career. I wanted to see people who were always trying to be healthy and try to get them to that point, and try to maintain them at that point.”

Following your parents: pros and cons

The three dentists in the second generation say there are mostly positives to following your parents into the profession. It is an easy and comfortable consult to be able to ask around-the-clock for parental advice or assistance with patient cases. The down side mostly involves longtime patients adjusting to kids who grow up.

“When I first started working after graduating, I would introduce myself by saying, ‘Hello, I’m Dr. Klipfel.’ And so many people would say, ‘Oh, I held you when you were a baby.’ They knew me since I was a kid, or babysat me, and they would say, ‘I can’t take you seriously as a doctor. I’ve known you your whole life.’ Or they would joke that I was 13 but I would tell them I turned 14 yesterday. Or they would ask me if I had ever done this procedure before. And I’d tell them, ‘third one today.’ I’m getting less of that now that I’m eight years into it.”

Peter Jr. said working with his dad brought them closer together. “Chelsea predicted we would kill each other within the first month we worked together,” he remembers. “One day, we rode bikes together over to Chelsea’s house and she was shocked. She said, ‘Oh, my gosh, they’ve become best friends!’”

“We used to butt heads a lot when I was growing up,” Peter Jr. said. “When I got into the office, it was sort of cool because he got to learn about some of the stresses in my life, and why I acted the way I did. And I got to learn about some of the stresses that he took home with him that I never really realized. As a kid, when I might have wondered why he didn’t get to one of my games or swim meets, I didn’t realize that maybe it was 4:15 in the afternoon and one of his patients came into the office in pain. And you can’t just run out the door and leave the patient. I know that now.”

Keon says his first job since graduating last year – at the Hackley community clinic –has been a satisfying experience. “I didn’t

want to mix family and business. Being at Hackley helps me serve a different population that is quite in need. I really enjoy getting the patients to a healthy place and helping them understand how to keep their health.” He takes the same supportive approach to patients at the private practice where he also works one day a week.

Like his siblings, Keon knows their parents have seen such a wide range of dental problems. “I still call them sometimes when I have questions,” he said. “I know they have had so much experience in the field. The more you do it, the more comfortable you are. But when you are first out of dental school, you are always trying to make sure that you are doing it right, that you are doing the best care possible for the patient. So they are a really good resource.”

It’s all about the patients

Donna’s patients have become accustomed to an usual way she puts them at ease, by singing softly while she works. Perhaps her love of singing is related to her church background – she is a lay pastor who leads the Fruitport Community Church. But between the singing and her self-described “bad jokes,” she wants her patients to feel comfortable.

“Dentistry can be incredibly stressful and I think it’s up to the dentist to find a way to make your patient feel comfortable,” she said. “I tell patients all the time that I realize this isn’t fun. Who likes getting a shot? If you liked these things, I’d be concerned about you. One patient told me: ‘I like it when you sing because I know you are in a good mood. If you aren’t singing, I’m worried you are in a bad mood. I don’t want you working on my teeth if you are in a bad mood.’”

Chelsea has picked up the singing tradition, though maybe not as often. “One of my very first patients, after I finished a filling, he sort of stunned me at first by saying, ‘Well, if you want my honest review, I’ll give you a rating of 3 stars out of 5. Everything is perfect but you didn’t sing and that’s the most important part, so you lost two stars. Your mom always sings.’ I said when I was a kid that I will never be like my Mom. And now we’re working in rooms next to each other and we start singing the song on the same line. Everyone says, ‘You are just like your mom.’”

Peter Sr. and Peter Jr. say they get compared a lot in their practice as well, but not because of singing, which is banned even when Chelsea is there to help out. Peter Jr. says one of the longtime staffers in the office, noting the similarities of father and son, modified the expression of “the apple didn’t fall far from the tree” to “the apple didn’t even roll when it came off the tree.” The Sr. and Jr. dentists use many of the same expressions in talking to patients and their strategy for relaxing patients is to talk about each step in the treatment process as they go along.

“Patients love to hear how we are progressing with their tooth,” says Peter Sr. “You give them almost like a play-by-play account. OK, we’ve got a little more decay to get out of here. And they ask does that mean we are getting close. They love to hear that feedback instead of just quietness.”

While the office atmosphere is important, Donna says the quality of the dentistry is obviously what matters most. “When I see someone who has fallen and broken their front tooth and they are mortified, I tell them: ‘The good news is we’re going to make it look better than it used to.’ And they are like, yeah, right. And then you fix it and they say, ‘Oh, my gosh, that is amazing.’ When you can make someone that happy after such a traumatic experience, I think it goes back to my goal when I first started into dental hygiene and then into dentistry – I have tried my hardest to change the mindset of people who are deathly afraid of dentists. And you know you’ve succeeded when the patients can laugh and joke instead of being worried about being in the dental chair.”

Peter Sr. still recalls an experience many years ago with a longtime patient who seemed to be upset about something. “I could just tell that something was troubling her,” he remembers. “We were going to do a filling. We got ready to numb her and I said, what’s going on? And she started crying. Her kids were being bullied in school. We talked for an hour. I never picked up an instrument. I gave her some ideas of things she could do about it. And we had to reschedule her appointment because we spent the time just talking. It was one of those fulfilling moments. I don’t remember any filling I did in 1992, but I’ll never forget that conversation. That was nothing to do with dentistry. It was about the care for the patient.”

The way Peter Sr. and Donna have focused on their patients as they built their practices, often making lifelong friends in the process, is a model for their children. “The amount of people they have impacted and the amount of relationships they’ve built is impressive,” says Peter Jr. “My dad’s been to so many funerals of his former patients to support the families, which they appreciate. Our parents didn’t treat dentistry just as a business. They treat it as a family of people who they were there to support.”

Chelsea feigns aggravation, but it is actually admiration, when she mentions a practical problem of her parents being so connected to so many people in the community. “We learned early never to go to the grocery store with them,” she says. “Good Lord, you would be there ’til the sun went down. In every aisle, everywhere we go, they know someone who wants to stop and talk.”

Peter and Donna agree that performing dentistry and caring for patients are the easy parts of their careers, while being the boss of the business has always been the most difficult part. But the rewards outweigh the problems, they say, which is why they were happy to see three of their four children decide to carry on the family tradition.

“When you think of everything you’ve done to try to get your practice to where it is at, and to form these relationships with the people who are your patients,” Donna muses, “to pass it off to someone who doesn’t genuinely care about those people, would just break my heart. We used to get letters all the time from corporate dentistry trying to buy us out. When our kids said they wanted to go into dentistry, in our hearts we were leaping for joy.”

Joy was also in the air a few weeks ago with the addition of a new family member. On April 8, Peter Jr. and his wife Liz welcomed a new baby, Sadie Anne Rick. The parental and grandparental advice she receives some day will surely be the same as it was for her parents’ generation – some variation of: “Don’t go into dentistry just because nearly everyone in the family is a dentist. Find your own path.”

Maybe Sadie will go her own way like Uncle Noah. Or maybe, just maybe, dentistry is in her genes like most everyone else in the family. No matter how it turns out, it will be yet another great Rick Family story around the dinner table. ■

In Memoriam

Dr. Henry Kanar Jr. of Ann

Arbor, a University of Michigan School of Dentistry faculty member in pediatrics from 1964-1998, died Dec. 2, 2024. He received his DDS degree in 1957 from the University of Detroit and his master’s degree in pediatric dentistry in 1971 from U-M. He joined the faculty of the U-M dental school as a clinical instructor in the Department of Pedodontics in 1964 and was promoted to assistant professor in 1972 and associate professor in 1976. He held an appointment as an attending staff member at Mott Children’s Hospital, where he was a member of the craniofacial anomalies program and the Cleft Palate Center. From 1969-81, he was program director for dentistry at the Institute for the Study of Mental Retardation and Related Disabilities. As a dental school faculty member, he taught predoctoral dental students in addition to Dental Hygiene, Orthodontic and Pediatric Dentistry trainees. He was a consultant to school’s General Practice Residency Program at University Hospitals, and to the Michigan Academy of Dentistry for the Handicapped, Plymouth State Home and Training School, and the Michigan Departments of Mental Health and Public Health, among others. He served on the editorial board and as associate editor of the journal Special Care in Dentistry, and was a fellow of the Academy of Hospital Dentistry for the Handicapped.

Dolores “Dee” (Janusch)

Kelly (BSDH 1951), a long-time supporter of the School of Dentistry, died February 3, 2025, in Traverse City, Michigan. Kelly and her husband, Chuck Kelly (DDS 1953), provided a $50,000 gift to the school in 2016 to help fund a Dental Hygiene Scholarship. in 2016. In a 2022 interview, Dee Kelly explained the gift this way: “One of the reasons is that the dentist side of the school is larger and gets more thanks, more gratitude, more everything,” she said. “And I just thought, the hygienists are pretty important to me, too, so if they need scholarship money as much as the dentists, I’d just as soon have the dental hygiene program receive it. And Chuck agreed.” After graduating with her BSDH in 1951, Dee worked as a hygienist in the dental practice of two dental school faculty members for two years, until Chuck graduated with his DDS degree and was assigned by the U.S. Navy to Morocco in northern Africa. While Chuck was practicing dentistry in Morocco, Dee worked with a Red Cross program known as the “Gray Ladies,” who were volunteers helping in hospitals and other medical facilities. After two years overseas, the Kellys returned to the U.S. and Chuck joined the dental practice of his father, Don

Calvin Kelly, in Traverse City. Dee worked part-time in the office as a hygienist, a role that allowed her to balance parenthood and profession. They raised seven children, including two sons who earned their DDS degrees from U-M, and three granddaughters also carried on the U-M dentistry tradition.

Charles J. Kowalski of Ann Arbor, professor emeritus of dentistry at the School of Dentistry, died April 27, 2025. He joined the University of Michigan faculty as assistant professor of dentistry in 1968, and was promoted to associate professor in 1971 and professor in 1978. His teaching focused on health measurement, randomized controlled trials, clinical trials with quality of life outcomes, comparative studies, and monitoring clinical trials. His research focused on the application of statistical methods in dental/ oral investigations, longitudinal data analysis, measurement of pain and quality of life, clinical trials, and bioethics. At the time of his retirement in 2009, he had published 168 articles and 68 abstracts, but continued to contribute to many more research projects in retirement. He was associated with the Statistical Research Laboratory, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, as a consultant from 1968-71 and assistant director from 1971-78, and was a statistician in the Center for Statistical Consultation and Research, Office of the Vice President for Research, from 1991-2009. He was a member, chair and co-chair of the university’s Health Sciences Institutional Review Board. He also served on the accreditation working group for the Human Research Participant Protection Program, the compliance activities task force, the subcommittee for the Human Research Coordinating Council, and the Clinical Research Infrastructure Taskforce.

Dr. Nick Palmer of Sterling Heights, Michigan, who taught orthodontics at the U-M dental school from 1994-2014, died Jan. 16, 2025. He was 77. Dr. Palmer, who held two dental degrees from Case Western Reserve School of Dentistry in Cleveland, Ohio, was practicing in Troy, Michigan, when he was asked to join the faculty at the U-M dental school in 1994. He

was an Assistant Clinical Professor, Associate Clinical Director of the Graduate Pediatric Orthodontics Program and taught in the Orthodontic segment of the graduate Pediatric curriculum. He also taught courses in temporomandibular joint disorders and mentored students for 20 years. He operated his orthodontics clinic in Sterling Heights for 46 years.

Dr. Henry Kanar Jr.

Charles J. Kowalski

Dr. Nick Palmer

Dolores (Janusch) Kelly

Michael Baity (DDS 1962, MS periodontics 1967), Nov. 12, 2024, Harbor Springs, Michigan.

Rick Beverley (DDS 2009), Feb. 6, 2025, Murray, Utah.

Marian (Haring) Blahnik (DH certificate 1952), April 22, 2025, Mansfield, Ohio.

Piiamari Riikka Bowers (DDS 2000), Jan. 22, 2025, Canton, Michigan.

John D. Clark (DDS 1965), April 17, 2024, Lincoln, California.

Mary Kathryn (Caris) Gray (DH certificate 1954), Feb. 7, 2025, Holland, Michigan.

Sally Lou (Hacker) Gustke (BSDH 1957), April 18, 2025, Clawson, Michigan.

Patricia Ann Hanna (BSDH 1979), Jan. 20, 2025, St. Clair Shores, Michigan.

Donald Hurst (DDS 1960), April 1, 2025, Marquette, Michigan.

Robert Kerner (DDS 1963), Feb. 18, 2025, Verona, New Jersey.

David ‘Kip’ Litton (DDS 1988), March 28, 2025, Clarkston, Michigan.

Ira Charles Madden (DDS 1955), Feb. 22, 2025, Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Melvin Munk (DDS 1955), April 10, 2025, Howell, Michigan.

Laurie (Mazur) Pytell (BSDH 1952), Dec. 26, 2024, Grosse Point Farms, Michigan.

James Straley (DDS 1959), April 11, 2025, Petoskey, Michigan.

Anthony Szyndlar (DDS 1979), Dec. 25, 2024, Port Huron, Michigan.

Denise Toner (DDS 1994), March 23, 2025, Pickford, Michigan.

Donald Wilton (DDS 1966), Dec. 30, 2024, Spring Lake, Michigan.

Daniel Zaroff (DDS 1965), Feb. 12, 2025, Fenton, Michigan.

Thank You, Donors

Indrit

Gusho

DDS Class of 2027

Hometown: Taylor, Michigan

Undergraduate degree: University of Michigan

“Breaking new ground as the first college student in my family, I greatly value the sacrifices my parents made along the way. Now, as I pursue a dentistry future dedicated to helping others, I am deeply grateful for the donors who help make this possible. It demonstrates the impact that generosity can have on others. Thank you for believing in me. I look forward to the day that I can pass it on to others.”