Alumni Profile: Shortt Family's 4th DDS Generation

Adding the next generation of dentists to a family dental practice is an interesting mix. It’s rewarding and enlightening, with a few challenges thrown in, for both the long-established parents and their newly arrived children.

That’s the consensus of the William and Therese Shortt family of South Lyon, Michigan, who say their transition has been fun and successful. Like the many dentists whose children follow their career path, the Shortts had talked for years about the possibility of their son Christian joining the practice. Then the day arrived when Christian graduated from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry in 2022. And so did his wife Juhi. It was a package deal. Bill and Therese earned their DDS degrees from U-M in 1987 and started a practice in South Lyon. For many years, Bill also commuted two days a week (by plane, he’s a pilot) to his hometown of West Branch, Michigan, to practice part-time with his father Lee, a 1944 U-M dental school grad. Lee had also followed his father, Chauncey, a University of Chicago dental graduate who opened the practice in West Branch in 1908. So Bill says he was well-versed in the pluses and minuses of following the previous generation in the same dental practice.

“It is hard to work for your family,” Bill said. “When my father went through dental school, there were no alternative methods. It was: this is how you do it. And that’s not how I did it. I learned a ton from him, but we butted heads a lot, too. So I think I understand that I needed to give Christian and Juhi space. I don’t think I’ve ever initiated a ‘this is how you should do this’ conversation. If they ask me something, I would say, ‘Well, here is what I see. You have to decide how it works in your hands.’ What works in my hands does not work in Therese’s hands, and what works in her hands does not work in my hands.”

Christian said he and his parents had discussed that maybe an option was starting his career elsewhere, then joining the family practice after a few years. But finishing dental school during the COVID-19 pandemic added a new element that complicated the practice of dentistry, particularly for beginning dentists. “As an associate you need a mentor,” Christian said. “In the first couple of months, as prepared as we were, I don’t think anyone coming out of dental school is completely ready to go. There were times when I was looking at an x-ray that I needed a second and third opinion. Or I’d be doing an endo tooth and I’d get advice from one of the two. Being here made a nightand-day difference in our production, in our success rate of procedures. Coming here was for sure the right choice.”

Christian and Juhi met in the first weeks of dental school and were married between their third and fourth years. (Similarly, Bill and Therese met in their first year and were married after their second.) Juhi said working with her in-laws has been an easy transition. “They do an incredible job giving us the independence and allowing us to do what we think is necessary in a patient situation,” Juhi said. “They make it very well known that they are there any second we need them, but they always give us a chance to do it ourselves. Because nobody practices the same. They know that, we know that. But we all know that we can always help each other out.”

As Christian was growing up, he spent a lot of time at his parents’ practice, and that familiarity is now on his list of pros and cons of joining the practice. “Probably the biggest con to working in this practice is that half these patients have seen me grow up,” he said. “They see me as the little four-year-old running around the office when they were getting their teeth cleaned. So everybody likes to call me Little Bill or Mini Therese or something along those lines. At first, they were a little bit hesitant to get treatment from me, to be honest, because they were like, ‘I saw you in diapers. You’re a dentist now?’ It was a little bit of a transition but we’re finally starting to get past that. They’re not referring to me as the young doctor anymore, they’re just referring to me as a doctor.”

Therese’s adjustment to her role as parent dentist is complicated by the fact that she is a longtime adjunct faculty member at the dental school. She is recognized around the student clinics as a generous and articulate instructor with an easygoing manner of advising about dental procedures and offering encouragement. But when it’s mom advising son, there can be moments. “It’s really hard sometimes,” she says, recounting a look she sometimes receives from Christian, leading her to reply, “OK, I want to teach you something, but you are glaring at me.”

Bill puts it this way, emphasizing his respect by saying it twice: “Therese is a teacher. I mean, she is a teacher.” He adds: “For her to step back and realize that they are not her students anymore, they are her colleagues, that was probably the hardest transition for everybody. Therese’s world is very exact.” The line, like many during an hour-long family interview, draws a round of warm, shared laughter among the four.

Therese said her approaches to dental care and instructing are a result of the faculty she and Bill learned from during their dental school era. “There was what was recognized as the ‘Michigan experience.’ We probably had too much of that back then, but it was about excellence. You were taught by the best of the best and you were held accountable by the best of the best. There’s a level of excellence that you are supposed to have.”

Beyond that insistence on top dental care, Therese said a surprising element of the transition to the next generation is that she can no longer share as many insider family stories with her patients. “I’d say the hardest part has been that our schtick for 35 years in practice was that my close patients know everything about my family. That was part of the humor – when funny and stupid things would happen and I could talk about it. It is super-hard for me now because I can’t tell anything about Christian and Juhi because they are now dentists here. Part of my schtick was my patients loved hearing the stories. Now, oops, I can’t tell that. I have to remember they are professionals and I can’t talk about that stuff any more. I have to stick to our other two kids,” she said, referring to their other two adult children, Derek and Madeline, who chose non-dentistry careers.

At the year and a half mark after Christian and Juhi joined the practice, the transition is going well and they are gradually logging more days as the only dentists in the South Lyon office. Bill has cut back his practicing to two days a week in South Lyon and one day in West Branch. Those flights to his hometown, which he has been making for 37 years, keep him close to the legacy of his grandfather and father – the first two generations of what is now four generations of Shortts who have practiced dentistry. As he watches Christian and Juhi become more involved in all aspects of Shortt Dental, Bill reflects on how that process worked for him. “Hopefully, I’ve made it easier for them. I went through that transition with my father. I was the little kid running around the dental office in diapers and so I was Little Billy with all the patients. I saw that transition change with patients where at first I was just the son, then I was a dentist, and then it was, ‘oh, he’s the boss.’ So I’m seeing that same transition happening now with these two and it’s really cool.”