Baylor
College of Dentistry handled 95,000 patient visits last year. We learned
that it was a lot more than just fillings and flouride.
No
one in our group was willing to brave the 45-foot climbing wall in the Morris
Recreation Center at A&M-Commerce.
At
the Agricultural Research and Extension Center, we learned how researchers
develop turfgrasses that are resistant to drought and disease.
A few weeks ago, I was in Dallas with our Chancellor’s Century Council group on what we called our 2006 North Texas tour. It was a whistle stop visit (by bus) to three of the A&M System’s prime properties—two in Dallas and one in Commerce, just to the northeast.
Most wouldn’t consider North Texas an A&M System mecca, but you might be surprised at all we have going on there.
Our first stop was the Baylor College of Dentistry, a member of the A&M System since 1996, and which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. It is a bit confusing having a “Baylor” school in the “A&M” System. Founded as State Dental College, the school went on to become part of Baylor University. BCD separated from the university and became an independent dental school in 1971.
The school sought to affiliate with a public university system in 1994, and our System snatched it up because of its national reputation, with the help of Erle Nye, a former chairman and prominent member of the dental school’s board of trustees who would later serve on the A&M System Board of Regents.
Dean Jim Cole told us that with faculty supervision the 356 dental students, 59 dental hygiene students and 113 graduate students handled 95,000 patient visits last year. And it was a lot more than just fillings and fluoride.
During our walking tour, we visited the Simulation Clinic and interrupted a first-year orthodontics class putting braces on plaster molds of the mouth. As we were looking over the shoulder of one of the students, she pressed a little too hard and broke off one of the teeth in her mold. She took it in stride, picking it up, gluing it back on and starting over. That is par for the course in this living laboratory.
Public service is a mantra of the dental school, a great deal of care being given at local children’s hospitals, public schools, and community dental clinics and health fairs. The school provided emergency dental care to 500 Hurricane Katrina and Rita evacuees last year. The Center for Maxillofacial Prosthodontics (hard to say and spell, but easy to understand) creates new noses, ears, eyes and other parts of the face for patients who have experienced disease or trauma. Extreme dentistry indeed.
We were among the first visitors to Texas A&M University-Commerce’s new science building and planetarium and this is what the banner said that hung over the building a few days later when I spoke at the building dedication. Commerce was truly frontier country when the university was founded in 1889 as East Texas Normal College. Today the university has 8,700 students, which is about the same as the population of Commerce.
Our first stop was the Morris Recreation Center (named for former president Jerry Morris), which was buzzing with activity from both students and members of the local community. It was opened in 2003, but looked like it could have been brand new.
President Keith McFarland boasts that the university is among the top five programs in Texas for producing teachers, principals, superintendents and counselors. It’s also a great place for boys to meet girls; females make up 63 percent of the student body.
We saw a planetarium show about how the ancient Egyptians used the stars. They really had quite an imagination. From what looked to me like a lot of random white dots in the sky, they constructed elaborate pictures and mythology. I told the audience at the building dedication that we need some of the Egyptians back at the System Offices to help us connect all the dots.
The last stop on our three-pronged tour was our Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Dallas, smack in the middle of North Dallas’ prime shopping area.
The population of Dallas has grown from 1.3 million people to 2.3 million since the center was formed in 1943. Today, a whopping 60,000 cars pass the center every day.
Frank Gilstrap, the resident director of research, told us that Southern Methodist University actually started the center through a private foundation in 1943. Three years later, it became the Texas State Research Foundation, where scientific research on cotton, corn and other crops was conducted. The center was conveyed to the A&M System in 1972.
The center’s turfgrass team has developed and released 17 distinct cultivars of turfgrasses across five different grass species, specifically adapted to the harsh arid and semi-arid regions of the greater south and southwestern United States. These grasses need less water, are more tolerant of heat and cold, and more resistant to disease and insects.
I am pleased that the Century Council got to learn more about our presence in North Texas.
This tour reinforced for me our belief that what we do should matter in the everyday lives of people in Texas and beyond. We’ve never been part of the so-called ivory tower, for which I say, “thank goodness.”
