UIC largest gift

Dean Bruce S. Graham of the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry has announced the largest-ever gift in the history of the college. The gift consists of $8.2 million worth of KaVo Group dental equipment and technology, and was made possible through the support of the Guy D. and Rebecca E. Brunetti Foundation. With this gift, the College of Dentistry has raised more than $36.9 million during the Brilliant Futures: Educating a New Dentist for America capital campaign, exceeding its $35 million campaign goal. Dr. Graham called it a “transformational gift,” noting the donation “literally will help us to transform our 39-year-old, outdated clinical facilities by creating a state-of-the-science Integrated Clinical Technology Center. The new center will encompass all of our undergraduate and postgraduate clinics within the first three floors of the dental school building.” The Integrated Clinical Technology Center “will consist of 300 clinical operatories,” Dr. Graham said. “As we move forward, we are committed to perpetually maintaining our clinical equipment at the leading edge of technological innovation.” Dr. Graham noted that the college has created two new clinics: the Delta Dental of Illinois Predoctoral Pediatric Dentistry Clinic and the Department of Orthodontics postgraduate clinic. “They serve as our showcase clinics, and stand for what we aspire to create throughout our dental school,” he said. “We are committed to renewing the remainder of our clinical facilities to introduce the same advances in digital technology. “In addition, all of the renewed clinics will meet current and anticipated Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards,” Dr. Graham continued. “More importantly, we will give our students the opportunity to learn their profession in an optimal environment. With this gift, we are on our way to fully integrating state-of-the-science technology to support our leading-edge clinical education." The Guy D. and Rebecca E. Brunetti Foundation is an independent philanthropical and grant-making foundation that supports elementary, high school, and higher education; health care; fine arts; and religious education, and other religious institutions in Illinois. Dr. Robert G. Brunetti serves as president of the Brunetti Foundation. He also is chief executive officer of ProCare Dental Group, P.C., which operates 14 dental offices in Chicago and surrounding suburbs.“The College was extremely fortunate that Dr. Robert Brunetti and the Brunetti family foundation shared in the College’s Vision of being the national leader in clinical dental education and understood our needs,” Dr. Graham said. “Dr. Brunetti realized that the College’s greatest need was a total transformation of our clinics.”Added Dr. Brunetti: “The Guy D. and Rebecca E. Brunetti Foundation was honored to play a role in helping the UIC College of Dentistry to create the Integrated Clinical Technology Center. Over the past decade, I have seen how UIC has assumed a role as a national leader in clinical dental education and the impact this has had on its dental students and the patients served by the College. Helping to provide the resources to renew the clinical facilities was the right thing to do.” The KaVo Group includes the following companies: DEXIS, i-CAT, Gendex, Instrumentarium, SOREDEX, KaVo, Pelton & Crane, and Marus. The KaVo Group offers integration of green technology, advanced imaging, and ergonomic patient care delivery systems.“The college also was fortunate that Mr. Vicente Reynal, president, the KaVo Group, also understood the impact of what the Integrated Clinical Technology Center would mean for present and future generations of dental students, faculty, and patients,” Dr. Graham said. “The only thing keeping us from being a great dental school is our outdated clinical facilities," he continued. "This gift of equipment and technology provides us with a significant percentage of what we need to create our Integrated Clinical Technology Center. The new center has a total project cost of $21 million. This gift, and other Brilliant Futures Campaign commitments, bring us much closer to our goal. In today’s world, in which oral health care delivery is so technologically based, we need to provide the students with the latest technology to give them a leading-edge education.“The KaVo Group provides us with a unique diversity of technological equipment—operatory delivery systems, handpieces, digital imaging equipment, and more. And we are going to have an alliance with them far into the future, so our students will have access to every future technological innovation created by the KaVo Group. Their values are service, innovation, and creativity, and our college wants to be allied with those values,” Dr. Graham concluded.Reynal said, “We saw the many benefits associated with the two new clinics in 2009, and we are confident that the entire dental student body—those in the DDS/DMD curriculum and in the postgraduate programs—will see a transformation in their clinical experiences by the time the renovation projects are completed.” Oral health for homeless program receives national awardExplained Dr. Brunetti: “When I became aware of the college’s plans to create the Integrated Clinical Technology Center to renew all of its dental clinics, I became excited by this challenge and wanted to help. It was a pleasure meeting Vicente Reynal and other representatives of the company. I knew that if we could form a partnership, we could do great things for the UIC College of Dentistry." According to Reynal, “We saw this as a tremendous opportunity to impact dental education in a very tangible and significant way. The KaVo Group was very excited when Dr. Brunetti and the Brunetti Foundation approached us with the opportunity to work with them to support the UIC College of Dentistry. We, too, understood what Dean Bruce Graham and the college were trying to achieve with the creation of the Integrated Clinic Technology Center and we felt that our product lines could play an important role in making that happen. “KaVo benefits from this gift because this is a unique opportunity to show other leaders in dental education throughout North America how our multiple dental companies have come together under one umbrella to help a dental school transform its clinical facilities in a unique way,” Reynal continued. “And, as KaVo introduces new advances in patient delivery systems, treatment care, and imaging, we will look to UIC to be a place where we can evaluate these new technologies in a highly productive and multi-layered clinical environment."UIC Chancellor Paula Allen-Meares added: “I join with Dean Graham and the entire College of Dentistry community in celebrating this transformational gift. I also would like to extend my gratitude to the Guy D. and Rebecca E. Brunetti Foundation for this extraordinary gift. This is a wonderful example of how private donors and public universities can come together for the greater good. I am excited for the long-range impact this gift will have on the UIC College of Dentistry.” Dr. Indru Punwani, head of the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, knows firsthand about the quality of the KaVo equipment because the Predoctoral Pediatric Dentistry clinic already has it.“The clinic is our Cadillac,” Dr. Punwani said. “Because we have tested this equipment out in the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, we know it will be phenomenal for the patients and for attracting the best faculty and residents for the next 20 years or so. KaVo has given us technology which they will keep updated. You can’t ask for more.”Dr. Susan Rowan, managing partner of the Monet Clinic at the College, said: “The college will gain the ability to educate students with state-of-the-art technologies. Its regard as a health-care institution will rise, and recruitment of the most highly qualified applicants to the programs will be enhanced. The students will reap the benefits of learning with the most modern equipment and technological modalities, allowing them to develop their critical thinking and technical skills to their maximum abilities.”Student Kelley Gyllenhaal agrees that the gift is transformational.“This gift will transform our daily clinical experience on a grand scale. Students will no longer need to struggle with outdated equipment and will be able to focus more on what really matters—learning quality dentistry and gaining practical experience. Furthermore, I believe this gift will help propel UIC into top tier dental school status,” she said.For more information, go to www.brilliantfutures.uic.edu.To comment on this topic, go to community.pennwelldentalgroup.com/.