After dental school at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, I was accepted into the orthodontic residency program at the University of North Carolina, where I received exposure to modern surgical-orthodontic treatment that I couldn’t have had anywhere else at that time. Afterward, I accepted a faculty position in the dental school at University of Alabama-Birmingham and began helping establish their formal orthognathic surgery program. This is where I learned the importance of focusing on the full face. 

 

My appreciation for soft tissue evaluation grew as I began incorporating facial plastic surgeons into the macro-esthetic planning sessions at both the school and my private practice, I also started receiving invitations to speak to multidisciplinary esthetic groups and found himself in the audience listening to presentations from non-orthodontists. I learned two valuable lessons: First, what dentists are doing in esthetics and how they think— and second, the wide degree of understanding and misunderstanding that dentists have about orthodontic diagnosis and treatment. As a result, it has become one of my missions to educate dentists about contemporary orthodontic thinking. 

 

The goal of this program is to do just that. Teach you how to make a boarder assessment of the face, not just the smile. For the interdisciplinary team, straight teeth alone does not guarantee a pretty smile.