A scholar’s second act: Estate donor’s journey from immunology to dental leadership

The transition from teacher to student at UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry held some awkward moments for Peggy O’Neill, PhD, GSBS ’74, DDS ’90. A research faculty member without a dental degree at the time, Peggy had grown frustrated with waiting for dentists to provide samples for her research. Determined to overcome the barrier, she decided to become a dentist and get the samples herself.

“My previous colleagues were now my professors,” Peggy recalls. “They didn’t quite know how to treat me, and I didn’t quite know how to be a student again.”

It had been 13 years since Peggy was last a student, earning her PhD in immunology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Anticipating a career in cancer research, she had no thought of dentistry until a conversation with  Barnet Levy, DDS, who had founded the Dental Science Institute at the School of Dentistry.

The institute—originally established to study periodontal disease, dental caries, and bone regeneration—needed a postdoctoral researcher to study bacteria and immune responses in periodontal disease. Peggy had an undergraduate degree in microbiology in addition to her PhD, so Levy encouraged her to apply for the position.

“I wondered what in the world I would do in dental research,” Peggy says. “But as it turned out, my skills and knowledge applied quite well.”

Starting out in 1974 as the first postdoctoral researcher at the institute, she was also its only female scientist. She unexpectedly became a faculty member when, as part of her postdoctoral work, she wrote a successful research grant application to the National Institutes of Health. The school’s administration informed her that since only faculty could serve as primary investigators for grants, she could either give the grant to someone else or accept a faculty position.

“So, they appointed me as an assistant professor,” she says.

In addition to her ongoing research into dental disease, Peggy’s new responsibilities included teaching—something for which she had no training. Harnessing her natural organizational skills and emulating successful teachers, she honed an ability to make microbiology and immunology understandable and interesting for dental, dental hygiene, and post-graduate students.

As she grew in her teaching abilities, she enjoyed helping students who struggled learning the material. Years later, some of her students would recount how she positively influenced their lives.

“When I went back to school for my DDS degree, some of my professors were actually students that I had taught,” Peggy says.

After earning her DDS, Peggy began teaching in the School of Dentistry clinic, providing one-on-one guidance and supervision to students developing their clinical skills. Several years later, a leadership change at the school led to her appointment as Vice Dean. For three-and-a-half years, she oversaw the school’s academic affairs, business office, and digital services.

Throughout her career as a researcher and faculty member, she never lost sight of the importance of basic science as the foundation of dental discovery and treatment. In 2024, she made an estate commitment to establish endowments in basic sciences, filling a need for basic science funding while helping ensure students have a thorough knowledge of this essential field.

“There’s a lot more emphasis today on the connections between oral diseases and systemic diseases,” says Peggy, who retired from the school in 2010. “A firm grasp of basic science is crucial to understand those links.”

As she looks back on the role that dentistry has played in her life, her estate commitment serves another important purpose: giving back to the school that she says gave so much to her.

“I got not only an excellent education but also a very long career that I enjoyed,” she says. “I really believe in what they are doing at the school, and it makes me happy to support them in this way.”