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Reese Woods (left), a fourth-year student, shows second-year student Jennifer Collins how to fit an upper denture at UT’s Winfield C. Dunn Dental Building. The school is near completion of a $15 million fundraising campaign that has brought it back to top-tier status.

It’s the stuff of an underdog sports movie.

A once-premier program fallen on hard times. Eager and hardworking players make the best of a rundown facility even without a head coach. All of this bringing the threat of a shutdown by an outside sanctioning agency.

But this is all how it was really playing out for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Dentistry in late 2008.

The program’s dean had left. So had many faculty members. Students were using dental chairs that came with their building in 1977. State budget cuts promised even deeper program cuts. An accreditation review, which could close the college, loomed on the March 2010 horizon.

“It was a fairly well-known fact or rumor out there that the UT dental school was in big trouble,” said the college’s dean, Dr. Timothy Hottel. “It was low on faculty, the building was falling apart. The ceiling and other parts were rusting and falling into patients’ mouths, dental equipment was held together with duct tape, and et cetera, et cetera.”

Hottel took the dental school’s top post in the midst of this, in January 2009. He was hired away from Nova Southeastern University in sunny Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., where he was executive associate dean.

As he was being recruited in Memphis, he was told that the dental school changes couldn’t be made in time of accreditation.

“That’s what made me take the job,” Hottel said. “I’m the kind of person that never says that I can’t do something.”

Hottel immediately joined UTHSC’s then-chancellor, Dr. Hershel “Pat” Wall, and former Tennessee governor Winfield Dunn (also a UTHSC dental school graduate) in a $15 million fundraising campaign that took them all over Tennessee and into Arkansas.

To date, the three and many others have raised $13 million toward the total goal. They’ve also raised $5.8 million of the total $7 million for complete renovations of the Winfield C. Dunn Dental Building.

Dunn said he was happy to be asked to raise money for the school, but became energized when he saw the poor condition of the school building that bears his name. He raised funds from many alumni groups, but was also able to get $1 million from the state this year specially allotted for the dental school project.

The school had not received any support from the state since it built the Dunn Building in 1976, Hottel said.

“In my testimony before the education committee,” Dunn recalled, “I told them that I couldn’t think of any higher calling for higher education than for those who will care for the future generations of Tennesseans.”

“When the state fails in its obligation and responsibility to meet the essential needs for those teaching institutions, then, in effect, it’s failed the people of the state,” Dunn said.

Up on the school’s fourth floor last week, construction workers put the finishing touches on the school’s main clinical area for predoctoral students. Two-thirds of the floor were complete and it was busy and noisy with about 80 blue-scrubbed student doctors hovering over patients’ mouths.

The $4.3 million renovation there included a technology upgrade that makes UTHSC’s dental program “the most modern school in the country, at least for the moment,” Hottel said. New chairs, new LED lights and new dental equipment will help make the transition from school to private practice a lot easier for third-year student Jason Gambill.

“What we had was — in a word — outdated. So, it’s nice that the school is keeping up with (new technologies) so that there’s some continuity of practice from dental school to private practice,” said Gambill, of Jonesboro, Ark. “Otherwise, it would’ve been a bit of a shock going from what we had to what most private practices have today.”

School officials continue to raise money and four renovation projects are beginning now for undergraduate pediatrics, the graduate periodontal area, faculty clinical research and on a basic science research facility. Those renovations have a $1.5 million price tag, which has been raised.

The school is also readying for a $1.5 million upgrade to its virtual reality lab that will bring in 20 new simulator units.

But aside from bricks, mortar, equipment and new technology, Hottel’s mission for human capital has paid off as well. He has recruited 16 new faculty members to the school since he began in January 2009. This is no easy feat as dental faculty are hard to come by and a move to Memphis isn’t always an easy sell, Hottel said.

“Let’s say there’s a job opening in Ft. Lauderdale, San Diego or Memphis — where do you go?” he asked rhetorically. “But we’ve made a big turnaround here, and now we have people who want to come here.”

– Toby Sells: 529-2742

University of Tennessee College of Dentistry

Founded: 1878

Enrollment: Four-year program totals about 320 students

Patients: Student practice has about 40,800 visits per year

Contact: (901) 448-6200

Website: uthsc.edu/dentistry

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