AAO Foundation program volunteers

Earlier this year, AAO Foundation (AAOF) directors and other key volunteers began recruiting a representative associated with each graduate orthodontic residency program to serve as a program volunteer. A program volunteer’s job is to encourage residents, clinical faculty, and others at each program to support the AAOF and his or her department by making a Continued Commitment to the Specialty and also to encourage junior faculty and others to apply for AAOF funding when and where appropriate.

Program volunteers recruited to date are as follows: Great Lakes Association of Orthodontists, Valmy Kulbersh (University of Detroit Mercy) and James McNamara (University of Michigan); Middle Atlantic Society of Orthodontists, Harold Middleberg (Albert Einstein Medical Center), Darrell Clark (Howard University), Fred Preis (University of Maryland), and Peter Greco (University of Pennsylvania); Midwest Society of Orthodontists, Jeffrey Thompson (University of Kansas City); New England Society of Orthodontists, Michael Blau (Boston University), Margherita Santoro (Columbia University), Terry Sobler (New York University), Charles Ruff (Tufts University), Gary Opin (University of Connecticut), and Richard Myers (University of Rochester/Eastman Dental Center); Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists, Alan Curtis (AT Still University), Kitichai Rungcharassaeng (Loma Linda University), Douglas Klein (Oregon Health and Science University), Carlos Flores (University of Alberta), Haofu Lee (University of California at Los Angeles), Sneha Oberoi (University of California at San Francisco), Steve Rowles (University of Nevada at Las Vegas), Holly Moon (University of Southern California), Mahbod Rashidi and Sumit Chawla (University of Southern Nevada), Hee Soo Oh (University of the Pacific), and Greg Huang (University of Washington); Southern Association of Orthodontists, James Leitner (University of South Carolina); and Southwest Society of Orthodontists, Larry Tadlock (Baylor College of Dentistry), Larson Keso (University of Oklahoma), Fred Garrett (University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston), and David Hime (University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio).

Recruiting a program volunteer for each school is another example of the AAOF’s long-standing commitment to foster philanthropy in the specialty and also part of a strategic long-range fund-raising plan to increase the current $34 million in pledges to $50 million.

Since 1994, the AAOF Awards Program, funded by its campaign, has provided $7 million to orthodontic education and research, primarily in support of junior faculty, including 135 fellowship awards, 148 research awards, and over 1000 gifts in support of orthodontic education.

Support for junior faculty has resulted in the publication of over 100 articles and abstracts, primarily in orthodontic journals, but also in many journals outside the specialty. Scores of lectures at dental, orthodontic, and other scientific meetings have been underwritten or subsidized by grants to junior faculty. To date, at the graduate orthodontic residency programs in the United States and Canada, 24 department chairs and program directors are funded, as well as junior faculty, tenured, associate, and full professor positions, and there are 9 National Institutes of Health funding recipients. In addition, 80% of the junior faculty supported by the AAOF remain in full-time academics after 5 years. The AAOF website includes final reports from some 250 peer-reviewed, funded proposals.

AAOF funding also supports the AAOF’s Craniofacial Growth Legacy Collection, designed to preserve representative materials from participating orthodontic legacy collections.

The AAO Board is pleased to announced that, because of the efforts of Elizabeth McNabb (Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists), president of the UCLA Alumni Association, and Tom Bales, Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists director on the AAOF Board and graduate of that orthodontic program, the UCLA Alumni Association has made a Continued Commitment to the Specialty by pledging at the Regent ($25,000) level, with the gift to be redeemed over 10 years and restricted to the Craniofacial Growth Legacy Collections project. Furthermore, we are pleased that the UCLA Alumni Association, the first to pledge to the AAOF at this or any other level, challenges every other alumni association in the United States and Canada to match or better their pledge.