Private university plans orthodontics program

UNLV's orthodontics program will be facing competition in the next few years as a private university in Henderson plans to launch an orthodontics program of its own.

The University of Southern Nevada, a private nonprofit institution in Henderson, announced last week it is gearing up to offer between five and 20 orthodontic residency programs per year.

The announcement comes soon after UNLV announced it was cutting the number of orthodontics residencies in half last month, from 16 to eight, amid a threat by a national commission to revoke the school's accreditation.

USN President Harry Rosenberg said the move wasn't spurred by UNLV's announcement, and that the private university would try not to overlap UNLV's program by recruiting the same students and patients.

In fact, the orthodontics curriculum will also be the only one like it in the country, according to Rosenberg.

Those who graduate in the orthodontics program will have to go to school for three years, instead of two years at UNLV, and will earn an MBA in the process.

Most schools require two years of education for students to become orthodontists, on top of four years of dental school education.

No other school requires its graduates to attain an MBA along with an orthodontics degree, Rosenberg said.

The earliest the university could start admitting students is fall of 2008. The university has a lot of paperwork to go through before being able to accept students. It needs to get approval by state officials and initial accreditation from several national organizations.

Although UNLV and USN officials say the new program won't affect their daily activities, they could be competing for orthodontics patients.

An accrediting agency issued a scathing report to UNLV's School of Dental Medicine earlier this year, and one of the agency's complaints was that residents weren't seeing enough patients.

Student training relies heavily on working with patients, and the Commission on Dental Accreditation report stated UNLV students and graduates weren't exposed to basic orthodontic care such as headgear and functional appliances.

Rosenberg said University of Southern Nevada's clinic will probably be near its main campus in Henderson, and not near UNLV's location on Charleston Boulevard near Rancho Boulevard.

USN has hired two former UNLV faculty, including the person who started UNLV's orthodontics program, to head its new college.

Dr. Lynn Hurst, former UNLV orthodontics director, will head USN's College of Advanced Dental Medicine. Dr. Jaleh Pourhamidi, a former UNLV instructor, also will be teaching at the college.

Both Hurst and Pourhamidi were ousted from UNLV after they spoke critically of the program during a Board of Regents meeting early this year. Both said they weren't aware of the present situation at UNLV's orthodontics program and chose not to comment.

The orthodontics degree will contribute to USN's goals of becoming a large regional university, Rosenberg said.

It opened a campus near Salt Lake City last year and, in 2005, expanded its offerings in Henderson to include a College of Nursing and an MBA program geared toward health professionals.

The university is the only provider of pharmacy degrees in Nevada, and its College of Pharmacy is its most popular program, having graduated 454 students since 2003.

But Dr. George Rosenbaum, president of the Nevada Dental Association, questioned the need for another orthodontics program in the state.

"We think it is not a good program to start," he said.

Rosenbaum said UNLV's program, even after the cutback, was producing a sufficient numbers of orthodontists in the state.

USN officials contend there is room for another residency program for orthodontists, of which there are only 330 nationwide. Unlike UNLV, which takes most of its residents from Nevada, USN officials plan to draw from a national applicant pool.

The addition of another local orthodontics program wouldn't affect UNLV, according to UNLV School of Dental Medicine Dean Karen West.

"I don't see it as detrimental to our program," she said.

Since UNLV announced last month that it was cutting its class sizes in half, one university system regent has called for a review of the program's finances to make sure the program isn't using state funds.

Regent Steve Sisolak, chairman of the board's budget and finance committee, expects officials to make a presentation on the issue at the Board of Regents meeting next month.

"There's just a lot of concerns with the finances of it, with them limiting students and adding faculty," he said. "There were commitments at the beginning that this wouldn't use any state money."

West said UNLV's orthodontics program is on track to meet the Commission on Dental Accreditation's recommendations by its Feb. 1 deadline.

"I feel very positive about our efforts," she said.