PHILADELPHIA –- The University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine has honored three people with the annual Alumni Award of Merit for 2008: Marc Ackerman of Jacksonville, Fla., Leonard Cole of Ridgewood, N.J., and Rowland Hutchinson of Louisville, Ky.

Presented during alumni weekend by the Penn Dental Medicine Alumni Society, the award recognizes loyalty to the school, excellence in the profession and community involvement. It is given annually to graduates who have maintained their ties with the School through support of alumni activities, who have demonstrated leadership in the profession and who have fostered and maintained the ideals that the school has stood for since its founding.

Hutchinson, a 1958 graduate, was dean of the University of Louisville School of Dentistry in 1991-98 and interim dean in 2005-06. He previously was dean at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry and held faculty posts at three dental schools, including the directorship of three periodontal residency programs, as well as part-time faculty positions at eight institutions.

A diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology and president of the Dental Deans Leadership Institute, Hutchinson is a former president of the American Dental Education Association and recipient of the 2004 American Academy of Periodontology Fellowship Award for distinguished service.

Cole, a 1957 graduate, has teamed a career in dentistry with one in political science, earning both a master’s and doctoral degrees in political science from Columbia University and developing an expertise in bio-terrorism and terror medicine. While in private practice in Hawthorne, N.J., he served as an adjunct professor of political science at The New School of Social Research in New York and later at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J., and at Rutgers University–Newark. He is on the boards of the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Alumni Association, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the United Jewish Communities.

Ackerman graduated in 1998 and was certified in orthodontics at the University of Rochester Eastman Dental Center. He practiced orthodontics in Bryn Mawr before moving to Jacksonville, Fla., in 2007 to become associate professor of orthodontics at Jacksonville University School of Orthodontics, where he also serves as director of evidence-based education.

Ackerman served as president of the Penn Dental Medicine Alumni Society in 2004–2005. He serves on the editorial review board of the American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics and on the editorial board of Orthodontics and Craniofacial Research.