A-dec First Impressions | Kansas City University Customer Story

Dr. Linda Niessen:
I'm Dr. Linda Niessen. I'm the founding Dean for the Kansas City University College of Dental Medicine here in Joplin, Missouri. The origin of the College of Dental Medicine really is part of the origin of the medical school, which resulted from the tornado that went through the community. In 2011, the tornado damaged the hospital—actually required the hospital to be torn down. FEMA brought in a temporary hospital, and after Mercy, the Mercy Hospital system built a new hospital, the town leaders said, gee, what can we do with this hospital? And decided that they would try to have a medical school because then they'd be more successful recruiting physicians for the community hospitals. They started the medical school in 2017, and then the town leader said, we really need a dental school. Would you consider starting a dental school?

Dr. Katie Champion: 
So, our approach to teaching dentistry, um, we're doing what we call a comprehensive care model. So we want students to really understand how to see a patient from start to finish in a really holistic way, and not see a patient as just a number of treatments, but really as a whole person and understand what they need, systemically and in their oral health.

Dr. Diane Ede-Nichols:
It has been such an incredible pleasure to work with everyone from A-dec. You sort of feel like you become part of the family. We were able to go out to, Newberg and visit the company and learn about the history and see how things were made, and it was just an amazing experience.

Dr. Linda Niessen:
The A-dec Company, did an amazing job working with our team. I can't say enough about the partnership with A-dec in Kansas City University. Dentistry is transforming. It is becoming much more technologically, savvy. So everything is a touch or just a wave of the hand, to turn a light on, to turn a faucet on. Every time we ran into something that we thought was a pain point and presented it to the engineers, the engineers worked with our team and offered different suggestions. You know, would this work? Would that work? Would this work? So they were wonderful partners in figuring out how to solve all of the pain points that we identified. This is a wonderful company with a long history of service to the dental industry. They understand the needs of the dental industry, and they have a team of engineers that I think's unsurpassed in any other dental company.