Dr. Burr Bakke has never been one to shy away from getting his hands dirty.
Growing up, Dr. Bakke wanted to be a surgeon. A lot of his friends’ dads were surgeons, and Dr. Bakke believed that medicine, particularly surgery, would be the perfect fit for him as well.
But that all changed one summer when Dr. Bakke, a Texas native who moved to Canada in seventh grade, returned to San Antonio to visit a friend whose dad was a neurosurgeon. In the six weeks that Dr. Bakke spent with his friend, he maybe saw his friend’s dad for 25 minutes total.
“At that point, I realized I don’t want to live in a hospital,” says Dr. Bakke, a dental implantologist who co-owns World Class Dentistry® in Sarasota with his wife, Dr. Jill Morris. “Now I live in the office instead of the hospital.”
Dr. Bakke decided to switch gears and attend Baylor Dental School where he earned his degree in 1980. He spent the next 24 years practicing at the Dallas Center of Esthetic Dentistry before moving to Sarasota to join Dr. Morris’ World Class Dentistry team.
As a dental implantologist, Dr. Bakke prides himself on providing the highest level of patient care. He places the implants and the final restorations, so his patients receive total comprehensive care in one office. Dr. Bakke’s commitment to his patients has placed him at the forefront of implant dentistry.
Dr. Bakke provides each patient with their own thoughtfully engineered treatment plan, incorporating his own surgical experience as well as other clinical aspects, to give his patients the aesthetically pleasing smiles and high functioning teeth they desire.
“I love performing surgery,” says Dr. Bakke. “It can basically change people’s lives by allowing them to have fixed teeth again.”
Throughout his career, Dr. Bakke has earned a reputation for excellence. He’s a fellow of the American Dental Implant Association, the International Congress of Oral Implantologists and the American Academy of Dental Facial Esthetics.
He was a chief clinical instructor at the Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dental Studies where he educated dentists from around the world on full mouth reconstruction.
It was while he was teaching at the Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dental Studies that Dr. Bakke met his future wife, an accredited cosmetic dentist who also was teaching at the post doctoral facility.
The couple first met in 2000 and three years later Dr. Bakke relocated to Sarasota where he joined Dr. Morris at World Class Dentistry. The two were married in 2004. Together, Dr. Bakke and Dr. Morris have five adult children.
Dr. Bakke’s two children both live in Texas. Will Bakke is a filmmaker and Brittain Ewert is in real estate.
Dr. Morris’ three children all live in the Sarasota area and are involved in the dental field. Cameron Johnson is in his second year at LECOM Dental School while Kelton Johnson and Sydney Johnson both attended New York City College of Technology. Kelton opened World Class Dentistry’s dental lab and is the office’s dental technician while Sydney is a part-time dental technician, who also is going back to school to become a dentist.
When he’s not busy working, Dr. Bakke, who resides with Dr. Morris in Sarasota, enjoys riding on the couple’s pontoon boat, hiking whenever possible and snow skiing with his wife.