UNMC announces College of Dentistry dean finalists

UNMC has announced five finalists for the College of Dentistry dean.

During March and April, the candidates will visit both the Omaha and Lincoln campuses for interviews with select groups, as well as open forums that allow interested faculty, staff and students to hear from each of the candidates and pose questions.

“We have an outstanding group of candidates for the position,” said Bradley Britigan, MD, chair of the dentistry dean search committee and dean of the UNMC College of Medicine. “I want to thank the search committee and our partners at Spencer Stuart for helping us reach this stage of the process.”

In the order of their visits to campus, the candidates are: 

• Name deleted at candidate’s request, dated April 2, 2024.
• Galen Schneider, DDS, PhD, executive associate dean, associate dean of faculty and professor, University of Iowa College of Dentistry. He will visit March 20 and 21, with a campus presentation Tuesday, March 21. At Iowa, he also has served as the department of prosthodontics chair (2006-2011), interim associate dean for research (2019-2020) and interim dean (2021-2022). A board-certified prosthodontist, Dr. Schneider has focused his translational and collaborative research efforts on cell signaling pathways associated with osseous tissue engineering, dental implant osseointegration and cancer cell biology. He is an assistant editor for the Journal of Prosthodontics and currently serves as the Research Committee Chair for the American College of Prosthodontists.
• N. Shaun Matthews, BDS, FDS, MBBS, clinical professor and chair of oral and maxillofacial surgery and hospital dentistry at Indiana University School of Dentistry, as well as associate dean for hospital affairs and director of IUSD’s Temporomandibular Joint Institute. He will visit April 5 and 6, with a campus presentation Thursday, April 6. He is internationally recognized for his work in temporomandibular joint surgery and well published in telehealth, with more than 12 years of experience in the field of teledentistry. As a lifelong academic, he has been responsible for creating multiple, collaborative, interdisciplinary clinics embracing both dental and medical disciplines. Dr. Matthews is a fellow of both the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Edinburgh.
• J. Bruce Bavitz, DMD, chair of the department of surgical specialties at the UNMC College of Dentistry, who will visit April 10 and 11, with a campus presentation Tuesday, April 11. A practicing oral and maxillofacial surgery in Lincoln since 1988, he is past president of both the Lincoln District Dental Society and the Nebraska Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, a fellow in the American College of Dentists and is editor of “Practical Reviews in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.” At Nebraska, he has helped train approximately 1,700 general dentists and 200 specialists. His research interests include evidenced based dentistry, alveolar bone reconstruction, tooth autotransplantation and procedural sedation.
• Gerard Kugel, DMD, PhD, associate dean for research and professor of comprehensive care at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine. He will visit April 12 and 13, with a campus presentation Thursday, April 13. With an expertise in clinical research and esthetic dentistry, Dr. Kugel is a reviewer for The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of Dental Materials, The Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry and the Clinicians Report, is on the editorial board of The Journal of Cosmetic Dentistry, Compendium and Inside Dentistry and is a fellow in the Academy of General Dentistry and the Academy of Dental Materials. Dr. Kugel is part of a group practice, the Trinity Dental Center, located in Boston.

During each campus visit, the candidate will participate in an open campus forum, in which they will make a brief presentation and answer questions. Each forum will be from noon to 12:45 p.m. CT via Zoom and in-person in the Dixon Auditorium at the UNMC College of Dentistry in Lincoln.

Candidates also will meet with UNMC, Nebraska Medicine and College of Dentistry leadership, faculty and student representatives.

At this link, find candidate bios and the dates and times for each campus presentation. There, UNMC faculty, staff and students also can access Zoom links for the campus presentations and provide feedback via the confidential survey form. The form will be added to the search webpage as candidates are introduced to the UNMC community.

The candidate selected will succeed Janet Guthmiller, DDS, PhD, who served as dean of the UNMC College of Dentistry from September 2014 until last fall. UNMC’s Rowen Zetterman, MD, has served as interim dean since August when Dr. Guthmiller left to become dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Adams School of Dentistry.