President's Message — February 2020
Although being installed as the President of the ICD USA Section was one of the most honorable events in my professional career, perhaps one of the most satisfying occurred in our hometown of Glenwood Springs, CO last October.
My wife Sherrie (RDH) and I served as co-Site Chairs for the Colorado Mission of Mercy, October 4-5th. We hosted 200 dentists, 150 hygienists, a myriad of dental assistants, including second year dental students from the University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine, and 35 dental laboratory personnel. Over 1200 volunteers from our valley and around the state came to this debut of COMOM on the Western Slope of Colorado.
After nearly 11 months of planning and preparation, it was very gratifying to see all that hard work pay off. During the two-day event, more than 1600 underprivileged and disadvantaged patients received over $1.3M worth of dental care. It is truly amazing what can be accomplished when a group of caring individuals comes together for a great cause.
As “Service” is one of our three core values, try one of these events on for size. You might just get hooked. To see the tears of joy after restoring someone’s broken smile, giving someone the ability to chew again or relieving the pain of one of the many, many patients seeking care (they often wait in line overnight), will give you a sense of satisfaction that is beyond description! If your state does not have a “MOM” event or similar activity, talk to your state dental leaders to see if they are interested in creating one. Many states hold these events annually, other states organize multiple MOMs in different locations each year. Guidelines are in place to help you develop one should you be looking for assistance. Does it take work? Certainly. Is it rewarding? Absolutely!
We have numerous opportunities to use our unique set of skills as dentists to give others a better quality of life. Look to our website or even within your own community to see how we can leave this world a better place.
If you participate in a service project or a mission or if you’re in the process of developing a service project and would like to get the word out to other like-minded individuals, please contact our USA Section office and ask them to post it on our website. Our USA Section Foundation receives over 100 grant requests every year and – thanks to generous donations from our Fellows as well as from corporate sponsors – the Foundation awarded over $115,000.00 in grants last year alone. To that end, should you have a business or corporate relationship that would be interested in contributing to our Foundation or could help sponsor one of our events, please contact the USA Section office and one of our Foundation leaders will contact you. The more donations and sponsorships we receive, the more money we can award to those worthy projects and activities.
What is new for 2020? Our Centennial Celebration of the International College! Our USA Section Celebration will be held in Orlando, Florida October 13-17, 2020. Our headquarters hotel will be the Waldorf Astoria Orlando which is a stunning luxury resort near Walt Disney World. I know we will be topping our USA Centennial Celebration Week off on Friday, October 16th with a very special Centennial Reception in Animal Kingdom’s Pandora area and we will also hold our first ICD Golf Tournament at Disney’s Lake Buena Vista Golf Course on Saturday, October 17th.
The ICD Worldwide Celebration will be held in Nagoya, Japan November 11-13, 2020. Please let those you nominate for Fellowship know that they can come to Japan for induction should they choose. What a lifetime memory that would be!
Both the USA Section celebration and the Worldwide College Centennial event will provide memorable experiences to recognize this historic moment in the history of the College. I invite all of you to attend and certainly hope that you and your families can come and join us in either one or both of these venues. You won’t want to miss these memorable Centennial celebrations! Please visit our website later next month at usa-icd.org for more information.
Speaking of websites, if you’ve recently visited the USA Section website, you will see a completely new look as well as a lot of changes and updates. New software (“iMIS”) has been installed (after an onerous process) and is a great improvement over our prior system. I know the ICD staff is still updating content, but soon will be enabled to do things far more efficiently than ever before. There may be a bit of a learning curve for all of us, but isn’t there always??
The candidate nomination deadline is May 15th this year. I know last year I was voting on candidates into the summer, but let’s use that as our goal in completing the process. You will be able to track your candidate’s progress on the website if a step in the application is missed and causes a delay in the process. Do follow up on those that you have nominated and let’s make this Centennial year a memorable one by nominating those deserving colleagues!
It’s an exciting time. Our 100th Anniversary of the pre-eminent world-wide honorary dental college. I am so very honored to be serving as your President in this monumental time. We are only as strong as our membership. Consider nominating one or more of your peers and “Share the Honor” of being a Fellow in the International College of Dentists.
I would also like to take a brief moment to mention the passing of one of our outstanding dental leaders who was taken way to soon from us on February 3, 2020: Dr. Bettie McKaig, from North Carolina. Bettie is a Past Regent of District 16 and the immediate Past President of the ICD Worldwide. She will be greatly missed. I would like to send my deepest condolences to her husband, Dr. Ross Vaughan, their family and friends.
In Fellowship,
James C. Setterberg, DDS
President, ICD USA Section