Preston Hollow alum and Texas A&M University College of Dentistry Amp Miller III’s 53 year career

Being a good dentist means seeing your patient as a whole human, not just a mouth in need of repair.

Dr. Jake Hornberger, who serves at Leftwich + Hornberger Dentistry in Lakewood, learned this best from his former college professor, Dr. Amp Miller III. The 78-year-old North Dallas native and current Lake Highlands resident is retiring in May after 53 years as a faculty member at Texas A&M University College of Dentistry on Gaston Avenue.

Miller sticks out in Hornberger’s mind in the time following the death of his grandfather, Dr. Charles Moody Alexander, who also used to teach at the dental college and chaired the orthodontics department back when it was under the Baylor umbrella. Alexander was Hornberger’s hero and the main reason why he pursued his career.

“He passed away while I was in dental school,” Hornberger says. “It was a time that could have been very isolating, I think, and made dental school really tough because of the constant reminders.”

Miller, a friend of Hornberger’s grandfather, was there to pull him aside after class, ask about his family and let Hornberger know that he was thinking of them.

“It added this very personal feel to dental school, to the academic work and really helped remind me of that human connection of dentistry that goes so much further beyond the clinical skill,” Hornberger says. “What was unique about him is that he had that great ability to connect with students on a deeper level in a way that demanded respect, but also, just made them feel known and cared for.”

Of course, Miller has decades of experience in working with students. He was an associate dean for clinical affairs at one time, but he didn’t stay there because he was more interested in teaching and managing curriculum. Miller has taught dental students of all levels and particularly enjoys one part of the learning process — the accumulation of swagger.

“The first few times they do something, they’re struggling, and you want to give them some thoughts on how they do that. Second year, they’re getting better, and some of them are getting really good. And then in the clinics, it’s fun to kind of watch them work with the patients the first time,” he says. “I like to see them get a little swagger, begin to get better and better, and it’s fun to watch them teach, like to watch a second year sometimes teach a first year sometimes teach a first year because they’ve done it once or twice, and the first years haven’t done it much.”

Despite his current dedication to the field, Miller didn’t always have a dream to work with teeth.

“I thought I wanted to be an athlete or something goofy like that,” the Thomas Jefferson High School alumnus says.

It wasn’t until his undergrad years at Southwestern University, between Waco and Austin, that he discovered an interest in health care sciences, like his major in chemistry, and teaching. Miller also connected his eventual pursuit of a dentistry career with his fondness for handmade models.

“Our family dentist would let me come sometimes and look over his shoulder in the lab,” he says. “I just got interested in the models and the details of the technical things that he was doing.”

Miller returned home to Dallas to attend what is now Texas A&M University College of Dentistry from 1969 to 1973 and never really left. He made friends with faculty members at dental school, who got him into teaching while also working as a dentist. Not too long later, he earned a prosthodontic (practice involving dental prosthetics) certificate in 1980.

At that time, restorative dentistry was the right place for self-proclaimed lab rats like Miller.

“You used to have to really be OK with being in the laboratory,” he says. “Back in those days, we were doing everything analog. You make an impression, you make a cast, you wax it up, you do a bunch of things with it, and so you really had to spend a lot of time in the lab. I didn’t mind that so much.”

The process for this work has now become more digital, which Miller says is a good thing. Yet, having the manual “hand skills” — like figuring out where a tooth needs to be restored, drilling into it and placing a filling — are still important for dentists today to know.

“When you prepare the tooth for a crown, you got to have some hand skills in order to get the shape right,” he says. “You still need to have hand skills in order to do that, even though the scanners and the digital technology has made it a little bit easier sometimes to fabricate the crowns and get them ready to be placed.”

Like Hornberger, plenty of Miller’s students stick around the Dallas area after they graduate, and Miller enjoys bumping into them from time to time and checking in. One of his former pupils is the college of dentistry’s dean, Dr. Lily T. García.

“He’s taught thousands of dental students, including me,” García said in a statement. “The dental college has served the North Texas community for 120 years, and Dr. Miller has been an important part of that for nearly half the time. His contributions to dentistry are immense.”

Miller keeps an eye out for professionals who would be good teachers at the dental college. Enjoying teaching and being around students, helping and engaging them, are mandatory qualities, and once Miller recognizes that, he encourages them to give it a shot. And these are things he saw in García.

“I was always interested to see what she would do because I knew she would be a good educator,” he says.

Hornberger recalls meeting Miller for the first time as a teenager when he was at the college with his grandfather. He doesn’t remember what the conversation was about but left realizing that Miller was one to know.

“I remember meeting him and chatting with him and just thinking like, ‘Oh yeah, that dude carries a lot of weight around here,’ especially with how excited my granddad was to introduce me to him and all that,” Hornberger says. “It was very clear that that was someone that you wanted to know and wanted to be around and learn from and that there was a lot of respect garnered from his presence.”

Scot Burkett, a college of dentistry student who plans to graduate next year, had the same first impression.

“He was the type of professor that whenever he spoke, everyone listened very intently,” Burkett says.

Burkett doesn’t take classes with Miller anymore but will still check in when he sees him around campus. Miller remembers him and will ask how he’s doing with patients. After taking on an overwhelming first case in clinics, Burkett knew just who to turn to.

“He took time out of his day, even though it wasn’t anything regarding his class or anything that he really had any responsibility for, and he sat down with me for a good hour, maybe, and talked me through the decision-making and treatment planning regarding crowns and how to properly approach it,” Burkett says. “That was super awesome because it really showed that he still cared and always will care, and he’s always somebody to rely on whenever I have questions.”

Miller is retiring on his birthday this year, and he plans to use his newfound free time for himself by playing golf and working on home improvement projects. Miller hopes he is remembered as a “capable, caring educator that tried to make the programs as good as they could be and help the students when they need help” — similar to how Hornberger and Burkett described him.

No longer having Miller as a readily accessible resource may be a loss for the college of dentistry students, but Burkett is grateful to have had any opportunity to learn from him.

“We all wish that he could teach forever and teach everybody,” he says. “He’s got to retire, and you’ve just got to be happy that it happened.”