For Dr. Rodney Vergotine, teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry was so nice, he decided to do it twice.
Dr. Vergotine recently returned to the College as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatric Dentistry, a post he held here from 1995 to 2001. In the intervening time, he had been an attending pediatric dentist at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and a faculty member at MarquetteUniversity.
In his second tour of duty with the College, Dr. Vergotine is involved “mostly in postgraduate supervision and education,” he said. “I’ll be working closely with both Dr. Indru Punwani, Head of the department, and Dr. Shar Fadavi, Postgraduate Program Director. A substantial portion of my time will be spent on the hospital dentistry portion of both the postgraduate and predoctoral dentistry curriculum. I will also be clinically supervising Pediatric Dentistry residents and hope to be involved mentoring resident research projects. In addition, I will work with residents in the hospital doing OR cases.”
“Dr. Vergotine is a valuable addition to the departmental faculty, and I look forward to working with him,” Dr. Punwani said.
Also, Dr. Vergotine plans on working with Dr. Larry Salzmann, Pediatric Dentistry’s Predoctoral Program Director, to restructure the hospital dentistry portion of the undergraduate program as well, and to assist with clinical supervision of students.
Dr. Vergotine is working with Dr. Anne Koerber, Director of Behavioral Science, Pediatric Dentistry, in access to care research and in motivating patients to improve dental behavior. He also hopes to continue some of the trauma research he started in Milwaukee.
After earning two degrees at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, Dr. Vergotine got his certificate in pediatric dentistry from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and earned a fellowship in pediatric dentistry at UIC before joining the College’s faculty the first time.
“I’m happy to be back,” he concluded. “I had great experiences my last five years in Milwaukee, but it’s an exciting time for UIC and I wanted to be part of that.”