In June 2026, the UF College of Dentistry’s Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery celebrated its 50th anniversary. During a special event that included current faculty and residents as well as program alumni, early leadership offered historical reflections, and the current department gave attendees a look into how the specialty is flourishing today.
Oral and maxillofacial surgeons at the University of Florida College of Dentistry, or UFCD, have long exemplified the value of specialized and interdisciplinary care.
Faculty and residents in UFCD’s Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, or OMFS, are experts in diagnosing and surgically treating complex conditions of the head, neck, face, mouth and jaws. This includes care for patients with oral disease and those with severe injury to, or defects in, the oral and maxillofacial region.
“When I started a long, long time ago — 42 years ago — as chair of the department, my vision was to create a program based on the core of oral surgery,” said Frank Dolwick, D.M.D., Ph.D., chair of UFCD’s OMFS department and director of hospital dentistry. “Our core is anesthesia, it’s third molars and other complex extractions, it’s implants, but it’s also trauma, pathology, orthognathic (jaw) and TMJ surgery.”
Building on the foundation of dental medicine
Oral and maxillofacial surgeons must complete extensive hospital-based training that builds on their foundational knowledge of dental anatomy and oral tissues. Their specialized dual-expertise in medicine and dentistry sets them up to handle complex cases particularly well.
“While their surgical core is deeply rooted in dental medicine, the daily impact of our OMFS faculty and residents is felt throughout the entire health system,” UFCD Dean A. Isabel Garcia, D.D.S., M.P.H., said. “They are essential partners in connecting oral health to complex medical care, stepping into the most critical cases to ensure we are truly treating the whole patient.”
The combination of their dental school and residency training makes OMFS practitioners attractive partners for interdisciplinary care and research collaboration at a teaching hospital like UF Health Shands Hospital. When UFCD’s building addition opens, it will include a Center for Integrative Oral and Dental Medicine specifically designed to expand interdisciplinary care.
However, interdisciplinary care is already underway. For example, in 2022, Jimmy Brown, M.D., D.D.S., FACS, a professor of otolaryngology and chief of the Division of Comprehensive Otolaryngology at the UF College of Medicine, joined the OMFS department with a courtesy appointment.
“Every other Friday, our residents get to operate with Dr. Brown,” said Danielle Freburg-Hoffmeister, D.D.S., M.D., a clinical associate professor and the associate chair of OMFS. “So, on those days, we have up to three operating rooms going.”
The department’s surgical caseload and impact continue to grow annually.
“It has always been important to me that residents operate,” Dolwick said. “You can’t learn to be a surgeon by watching other people operate.”
Modern oral surgery takes shape
In 1964, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals officially designated oral surgery as a specialty of dental medicine. This distinction acknowledged the advanced training required of oral surgeons after dental school and formally granted these practitioners membership on hospitals’ medical staff.
During UFCD’s formative years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the first two chairs of the Oral Surgery Department (as it was originally called) furthered the credibility of this new specialty.
Former OMFS residency program director Matt Hall, D.M.D., M.D., who joined the UFCD faculty in 1978, called this era the “dawn of modern oral surgery.”
The very first oral surgery department chair at UFCD was John Montgomery, D.D.S., a former captain and chief of oral surgery in the United States Air Force. He assumed the role in 1972 as a joint appointment in the College of Medicine’s Department of Surgery.
With a certificate in oral surgery from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Montgomery established the earliest interdisciplinary protocols between UFCD’s oral surgery unit and the hospital. These foundational protocols established how dental infections and facial trauma would be triaged for decades to come.
When he joined UFCD, the college’s oral surgery department had no existing dental clinics, residents or specialized surgical suites. Montgomery was responsible for hiring the first oral surgery faculty members, securing the department’s initial wave of clinical equipment and designing the workflow for the oral surgery clinic.
Among this first wave of oral surgery faculty, several cemented their rightful place in the operating room by advancing innovative surgical techniques.
The department’s second chair, Fred Funke, D.D.S., published the first medical report proving that a patient could have a double nerve channel in their lower jaw. This discovery directly improved operating room safety by changing how surgeries were performed.
Because practitioners could no longer assume patients only had one main nerve pathway, Funke’s work changed how surgeons studied X-rays before an operation. It also led to new ways of numbing the jaw completely, protecting patients from permanent nerve damage during wisdom tooth extractions and dental implant surgeries.
“In 1978, two years after the department’s first resident at UFCD, the specialty’s national association name was changed to the American Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons,” Hall said at the recent anniversary event. “This was accepting the fact that the scope had changed…”
By then, OMFS practitioners were routinely managing severe facial trauma and complex reconstructive surgeries alongside physicians from the UF College of Medicine, or COM.
In fact, when Hall served on the Shands Hospital credentials committee in 1978, he noted that OMFS privileges were on par with those of COM practitioners. According to Hall, physicians, including the head of neurosurgery, implicitly respected and trusted the level of training oral and maxillofacial surgeons were receiving at UFCD.
“They just expected us to do what we were trained to do, and that was that,” he said.
The residency program begins to flourish
From the beginning, UFCD oral surgery residents were fully immersed in the broader medical campus at what was then known as Shands Teaching Hospital and the J. Hillis Miller Health Science Center.
Four years after the 1972 introduction of a dental public health residency, OMFS became the college’s second advanced educational program on July 1, 1976, with Jeffrey Laskin, D.M.D., M.S., M.D., appointed first program director. The program initially operated as a three-year residency.
“When the program first started, it was more like an apprenticeship,” Hall said, recounting the information faculty members would pass on to residents in the clinic and roundtable “conferencing” they would hold for complex cases.
OMFS residents were involved in procedures for cases shared with the COM, including tumor removal, emergency airway creation in the neck, and harvesting bone and skin from patients’ ribs or hips for orofacial reconstruction.
Hall has a sharp memory of the program’s earliest residents, including the very first: Charles Beck, D.D.S.
When the oral surgery residency program was granted provisional approval and initiated operations in July 1976, Beck became its inaugural resident.
He stepped into a slightly unusual role, serving as the program’s chief resident for three years before receiving his OMFS certificate from UFCD in 1979.
“He came in with experience,” Hall said. “Charlie had just finished a one-year general practice residency at the Veterans Affairs hospital across the street. He knew Shands Hospital and had some oral surgery experience already.”
Hall says that of the first 10 OMFS residents, four went on to share the knowledge they acquired with future oral surgeons through roles in academic dentistry. This same energy for knowledge exchange is what makes the OMFS department incredibly valuable to the dental students earning their DMD degrees at UFCD today, he said.
“It’s not just a residency,” Garcia said. “It’s the fact that we provide some of the very best oral surgery training for our dental students.”
Reputation takes root around the world
If the 1970s were the origin story for UFCD’s success in establishing the OMFS department and residency program, the 1980s were a springboard for its impact across the nation and the world.
Throughout the decade, momentum and presence were built with the establishment of the Craniofacial Center in 1981, the Dental Occlusion and Facial Pain Center in 1984 and the Oral Oncology Clinic in 1987.
In 1984, the department shifted from a three- to four-year residency program, anticipating the national mandate for a four-year OMFS curriculum established just a few years later. At the same time, conversations were already underway for the eventual addition of a six-year track that would enable residents to earn a medical degree alongside their OMFS certification.
The addition of an M.D. pathway, however, did not come easily. Dolwick recalls a five-year effort to help others recognize the rigor of OMFS training and the value of pairing specialty certification with a medical degree.
A crucial ally in that effort was Nicholas Cassisi, D.D.S., M.D., then chair of the College of Medicine’s Department of Otolaryngology (Ear, Nose and Throat). With training in both dentistry and medicine, Cassisi appreciated the advanced medical expertise developed through an OMFS residency and was able to effectively convey that to peer faculty.
“He thought it was the right thing to do,” Dolwick said of Cassisi’s support.
With one resident enrolling upon its approval, this track was formalized into the department in 1989.
Both resident track expansions took root under Dolwick’s initial leadership, having joined the faculty during the early 1980s. He quickly elevated the program’s global standing with his advances in non-invasive temporomandibular joint, or TMJ, pain treatment.
“He was the up-and-coming young oral surgeon at that time,” Hall said.
By then, oral surgeons were moving away from major, open-jaw operations and exploring gentler approaches out of Japan. By 1989, Dolwick developed TMJ arthrocentesis: a simple, needle-based procedure to wash out and relieve the jaw joint. This breakthrough revolutionized jaw pain treatment worldwide, allowing most patients to be safely treated in a regular clinic rather than requiring a hospital stay.
Dolwick’s immense impact on the specialty was honored in 2007, when an entrepreneur and grateful patient donated $250,000 to establish the M. Franklin Dolwick University Chair. With an additional $1 million raised through donations by former residents, patients and friends of the department, this is the largest permanently endowed position in the college’s history.
His reputation preceded him even early in his career and certainly caught the attention of international practitioners like Alejandro Martinez, D.D.S., a Mexican board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon who would eventually serve as president of the International Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons.
Martinez recalls “chasing” Dolwick around the 1987 American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons international conference in Anaheim, California, in hopes of bringing him to Mexico to lecture at their national conference.
“The chair of the Mexican association asked me, ‘Who do you want to bring to teach for the national meeting?’” Martinez recalled. “I said, Frank Dolwick, and he asked, ‘Who is Frank Dolwick?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know, but I have read his books.’”
His determination eventually paid off when Dolwick visited Mexico as a guest lecturer, sparking a lifelong friendship grown out of a mutual dedication to the specialty. In 1989, Martinez came to Gainesville to complete an orthognathic and temporomandibular joint fellowship under Dolwick.
Dolwick says Martinez “literally has changed oral surgery throughout the world.”
He maintains a close relationship with UFCD as an invited lecturer and carries the department’s reputation worldwide.
“Many of us are here today because someone believed in us; that happened to me,” Martinez said, reflecting on his fellowship.
During the OMFS anniversary programming, Martinez acknowledged the body of international fellows he had “the privilege of representing.” For many years, dentists like him have come to Gainesville from around the world “seeking advanced education, mentorship and inspiration.”
Of these international fellows, Martinez detailed the paths they’ve taken to carry their specialized knowledge well beyond the department’s home in Gainesville. Some, he said, pursued roles in academic or administrative capacities, others in research.
“Others quietly transformed the lives of thousands of patients in their community,” he said. “Yet regardless of where life took us, we’ll carry a piece of Gainesville with us.”
And carry they have.
“The knowledge acquired here has traveled across continents,” Martinez said. “It has reached universities, hospitals, operating rooms and communities through North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa…”
21st-century care
With a new millennium close in the shadow, the department’s clinical capabilities continued to evolve.
Catalyzed by a $300,000 gift from the Swiss implant innovator Straumann AG, the OMFS department opened the nation’s first Center for Implant Dentistry in 1999. The center was founded by prosthodontist Dean Morton, B.D.S., M.S., and oral and maxillofacial surgeon Jim Ruskin, D.M.D., M.D. Ruskin earned his D.M.D. degree from UFCD in 1981 before venturing to Nebraska for his OMFS certification. After returning to Gainesville to help establish the center, Ruskin also served as chair of the OMFS department and led a significant increase in clinical space.
Another key figure in the center’s launch was Will Martin, D.M.D., M.S., FACP, recruited to the faculty in 1999 after graduating from dental school at UFCD in 1996. Under their combined leadership, it became the first U.S.-based International Team for Implantology, or ITI, Scholarship Center in 2000, a prestigious designation that — to this day — is held by only a handful of top-tier universities.
Among its notable alumni is Luiz Gonzaga, D.D.S., M.S., who completed the ITI Scholarship at UFCD and now serves alongside Martin as a UFCD clinical associate professor for OMFS.
Together, the duo has continually pushed the center to the forefront of the digital frontier.
During the recent anniversary event, Martin and Gonzaga took the stage to detail the center’s evolving application of artificial intelligence technologies.
They described the modern shift away from messy physical impressions and wax models to the “virtual patient.”
By running 3D CBCT bone scans through deep-learning neural networks, clinicians automatically segment skeletal structures, vital nerves and tooth roots in minutes. This dataset is then merged with intraoral surface scans to build a highly precise digital twin.
Capitalizing on this exact root architecture map, Martin and Gonzaga’s small-but-mighty team developed the patent-pending, 3D-printed “SocketFit” surgical guide. Designed to seat directly within immediate extraction sockets, the guide stabilizes drilling and prevents drill deflection, ensuring micrometric implant accuracy.
They also employ a specialized AI-animated smile design engine to morph static 2D photographs and imaging data into moving smile preview videos, letting patients visualize their restored teeth in action before initiating any irreversible treatment.
Another transformative horizon for OMFS
Digital workflows and artificial intelligence may be prominent in the future of OMFS patient care and surgical techniques, but UFCD’s department alumni remind us that technology is a tool only as good as the person using it. The true strength of the program remains with its people and the groundwork they’re willing to lay.
“The future of our specialty will not be determined by technology, virtual surgical planning, artificial intelligence or new techniques,” Martinez said during his anniversary address. “The future of our specialty will be determined by whether we continue to invest in people, whether we continue to create opportunities for those who will come after us.”
The next generation of OMFS and implant specialists will join the college at what Garcia described as the most transformational period since the institution enrolled its first class of dental students in 1972.
Discussing a multimillion-dollar Dental Science Building Project underway, she described a future in which OMFS will benefit greatly. The department’s footprint will grow, and its existing spaces will be completely renovated. The building addition will also be home to a new center where the interdisciplinary care OMFS already provides can flourish.
“The focus of this transformation and the incredible support that we’ve received from the State of Florida is truly on education and patient care,” Garcia said. “We’re envisioning the Center for Integrative Oral and Dental Medicine as a space where we can come together with many of the specialties with whom we work already, to treatment plan and solve together to be more effective.”
Already, the department’s surgical caseload and impact continue to grow annually.
In April 2026, Freburg-Hoffmeister — a 2017 alumna of the OMFS residency program and its current program director — was appointed as the department’s associate chair. In this role, she works closely alongside Dolwick to advance the department’s missions in education, research and patient care.
This strong leadership is reflected in the department’s productivity, which spans both everyday outpatient care and major surgeries. Last year alone, OMFS faculty and residents provided care during more than 13,000 patient visits in the clinic.
At the same time, residents are getting ample hands-on experience in the operating room.
“We’re on track to break our surgical case record this year, more than 550 cases, which means probably more than 1,200 procedures,” Freburg-Hoffmeister said.
To put those numbers into perspective, one surgical case represents one patient’s session in the operating room. However, it is very common for oral surgeons to perform multiple procedures during a single case session, like repairing a fractured jaw and fixing a shattered cheekbone.
Freburg-Hoffmeister noted that such a high volume of complex, real-world experience ensures UFCD’s OMFS residents well exceed their practice requirements.
As the UFCD Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery looks toward its next era of success, it reflects on the remarkable terrain mapped by early pioneers.
“It was fun to be a pioneer,” Hall said. “But, listening to Dean Garcia, I realize that every generation is full of pioneers.”