The buildings are gone, but part of Gilbert Manor will live on in the new building for the Medical College of Georgia's School of Dentistry.
"That's my understanding, that some of those bricks and things that were in the old Gilbert Manor were actually ground up and are part of the surface now," said Dean Connie L. Drisko.
That is only one of the environmentally friendly aspects of the building, which will begin construction ceremonially today at a groundbreaking. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue and University System of Georgia Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr. are scheduled to speak.
The building will be the first on campus to pursue certification as sustainable and environmentally friendly from The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System, Dr. Drisko said. That includes efficient cooling and heating and features such as lights that go off when a room empties and shades that come down when the sun hits windows.
"Our students have been very cognizant of asking us if we were going to be environmentally friendly, and we are," Dr. Drisko said.
In the past five years, colleges and universities have been leading the green building design trend, probably at the urging of their students, said John Starr, principal architect of Lord, Aeck & Sargent, which helped design the new dental school building. Energy-saving features such as a high-efficiency heating and air system were added without increasing the budget by savings in other areas, Mr. Starr said. Thoughtful placement of windows allows greater use of daylight, using less lighting, which means less electricity and less heat from those lights, he said.
"There are all of these ripple effects that by being intelligent about the design you can reduce energy and you can apply similar logic to things like recycled and sustainable materials where there are benefits for making smart decisions," Mr. Starr said.
The $112 million, five-story building will have nearly 270,000 square feet of space, enough to accommodate much larger clinics that can easily handle modern technology that now must be juggled in a building that opened in 1970. It will also allow the school to expand from its current enrollment of 63 to 100 by 2016.
"Right now, we're characterized as a small school," Dr. Drisko said. "Once we get up to 100, over the next few years, then we'll be one of the larger schools."
Only 13 of the 58 U.S. dental schools currently have a class of 100 or more, she said.
Georgia already ranks below the national average in dentists per 100,000 population, and because 80-85 percent of MCG's dental graduates practice in the state, it will have an impact, she said.
The school will also expand the number of dental residents from 45 to 72. Specialty dentists are in short supply in various areas of the state, Dr. Drisko said.
"For instance, south Georgia has a very significant lack of pediatric dentists," she said. "There are some parts of the state where oral surgeons and endodontists are also short, so people have to drive a ways to get to one of those specialists."
The new building and larger class size will also mean more patients coming in. Right now, the school sees about 50,000 patient visits a year, but it could do more, Dr. Drisko said.
The school is looking at 22 to 24 months for construction and hopes to move in by spring 2012 at the latest, Dr. Drisko said.
A new outpatient operating room, a new clinical research area and a new Center for Esthetic and Implant Dentistry will add to that patient load, she said. The operating room will take care of healthy patients that need to be anesthetized for their dental work, cases that used to go over to the main hospital. An esthetic dentistry center will feature complex cases that could involve a number of specialists working on discolored, damaged or broken teeth or misaligned jaws, Dr. Drisko said.
"Those people are worked up through a team of esthetic and implant dentists so that the end result is as natural and as beautiful and as functional a smile as you could possibly get," she said.
Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Groundbreaking for the Medical College of Georgia's new School of Dentistry building
WHEN: 3:30 p.m. today
WHERE: The former Gilbert Manor housing authority site
GETTING THERE: Take 13th Street/R.A. Dent Boulevard past the intersection with Laney-Walker Boulevard. Turn right to Goss Lane and follow the signs. MCG public safety officers will be on Goss to direct visitors and assist with parking.
SPECIAL GUESTS: Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr. and Augusta Mayor Deke Copenhaver are set to appear.
GILBERT MANOR REMEMBERED
Gilbert Manor housing authority will always have a presence on the site. In addition to providing fill materials from crushed brick and concrete from the former buildings, the Medical College of Georgia saved about 900 bricks and the granite Gilbert Manor sign for a historical marker.
DR. CONNIE DRISKO
Dean of the School of Dentistry, Merritt Professor
Dr. Drisko has led the School of Dentistry since May 2003, guiding fundraising efforts, recruiting faculty and shaping academic programs.
She spent 16 years as a dental hygienist before earning her D.D.S. from the University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Dentistry and a certificate in periodontics from the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leavenworth, Kan.
Her research interests include nonsurgical therapies and oral-health systemic diseases.
DR. GERARD CHICHE
Director of the Center for Esthetic and Implant Dentistry, Thomas P. Hinam Endowed Chair of Restorative Dentistry
Dr. Chiche came to the School of Dentistry in July after 28 years on the faculty of Louisiana State University's School of Dentistry, where he served as chairman of the Department of Prosthodontics and helped the department rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.
Dr. Chiche told the School of Dentistry's publication, Word of Mouth, that he aims to help teach residents, improve patient care and connect computer-assisted technology more to dentistry practices.
DR. GEORGE SCHUSTER
Chair Emeritus for the School of Dentistry's Department of Oral Biology, Arthur Merritt Professor Emeritus
A founding faculty member of the School of Dentistry, Dr. Schuster received the 2009 MCG Research Institute Lifetime Achievement Award. He retired in 2008 after 38 years on the faculty.
Dr. Schuster holds two patents and was awarded more than $4 million in research funding. His research has included examining the effects of dental materials such as resin on cell membranes.
-- Erin Zureick, staff
Comments
Oh, this must be why one of the reasons they need money so bad that they are overcharging and fraudulently charging their patients and insurance companies. The PPG too, they are building new centers too. They arent giving any of these great dental services in the ER, but they sure do like charging for them!!!!!
LEED's is a joke!
If it is a joke, they'll be laughing all the way to the bank when their utility bills are a fraction of their inefficient counterparts. Sustainable design costs a bit more initially, but pays for itself in the long run. Less cost, less energy/water use, more aesthetically pleasing, all while providing the exact same services: I ask you what's not to like? Do you really have that hard a time seeing the big picture, or does the dirty word "green" just put you off, in general? Sustainable design is not a fad, but a necessity if the next generation is to enjoy the same luxuries and freedoms as the last. Way to go, MCG!
Congratulations MCG! This new buidling will enhance the School of Dentistry..... enabling it to train more dentists for the state of Georgia.
Also glad to see the building will be LEED certified
I'm LEEDs certified, its a damn joke.
Care to be more specific? Or is this just a baseless rant?
If you don't know the processes of one becoming LEEDs certified. Then do some research, and I will debate LEEDs with you.
It's funny you're telling me to do research when you haven't named one specific gripe you have with the LEED certification process. So far there's nothing to debate. Don't get me wrong, the standards are not perfect and much more can always be done to improve the efficiency of our designs and reduce our impact. But they are certainly a step in the right direction toward sustainability. Do you have a specific problem with the standards, or are you against the principle altogether?
Even with the Tax incentives LEEDs is not economically feasible. Why is it that most builders and developers only build LEEDs certified buildings when required by contract? Which are mostly government contracts or government funding is involved.
Because builders only build what the buyer wants to buy. Most companies, or homeowners for that matter, are concerned only with the initial cost of a building rather than the life cycle cost. Of course a LEED building will be more expensive than one that is simply built to code, but it will be significantly cheaper to operate. Eventually these savings offset the initial mark-up, and from then on, the building is actually cheaper than its to-code counterpart. A savvy company or individual with the means to do so would gladly pay more now for something that will be cheaper in the long run, but most, sadly, do not. Sometimes this is legitimately due to present financial restraints, but usually this is due to poor long-term planning. And then there are the health, aesthetic, and community benefits, but that's another matter entirely.
Fish, I some what agree with you. However, until the LEED's building certification is feasible its pointless.
The buildings going up in that section of the city are grand monuments with both MCG and Univ. changing the Augusta skyline daily.... From the outside looking in it reminds me of the space race .. While its a given that the physical structure should grow with need I hope the administration has considered the staffing of the new and exsisting departments..... All the new tools and space mean nothing when trained staff are not availiable or on station to use it ... Cuts in staffing help to build space but not improve service ....
LEED is not a joke or pointless. It is a good step in the right direction plus the qualification for certification is an ever-evolving process. Each year's new requirements get "better" than the previous. The certification is feasible .... I am not sure of your bitterness but as someone who has worked with many LEED projects I am a fan of what they are doing with the idea.
If the following turns out to be as suspected the dentist have just become the first line of defense for cancer: There is a group of researchers in North Carolina that believe there is a 100% relationship between breast cancer and jaw cavitations. If this research is true all existing cancer research is headed in the wrong direction. The cavitations can be detected using thermography and it also will show a breast tumor or the beginning of one on the same side of the body. The theory is that the caviatation, mostly at old wisdom tooth sites, is feeding the tumor. When a dentist cleans out the infection in the cavitation the tumor no longer has a feed of acid material to it and it skrinks. If it doesn't completely go away, ablation is used to finish the job and all surgery, chemo and radiation is avoided. I am personally gathering data on the effects of cavitation repair and just got a report of hearing being completely restored in an ear instantly when the caviatation was repaired. You can use thermography or muscle testing to find the cavitations. A digital xray will show them clearly to a trained dental surgeon that knows what to look for in the jaw.
The presence of the Governor and the Chancellor of the Board of Regents shows that the plot to turn MCG in Augusta into the Dental Branch is completely top-down. Dr Rahn split with the MCG Foundation over use of asset money to build the dental school-this must be a very high priority! While MCG gets a new dental school, money will be stripped from the medical school to support the other medical campuses, particularly Athens. Augusta will receive much less bang for the buck from a dental schoo, as opposed to a medical schooll, however. Once again the leadership has cloaked a loss of money to MCG as a boon to the campus.
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