Where Are They Now?

As an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, Dublin graduate Kacey Howell has spent much of his adult life in big cities — Austin, Houston, New York. But now, as he looks ahead, he is excited to one day move back to Dublin and take over the operations of his family ranch, which has been in his family since 1886. “It’s sort of come full circle for me,” he said.

Howell graduated from Dublin High School in 1996. He went to UT Arlington for a year and then transferred to UT Austin, where he majored in biology. One of his aunts had attended dental school, and she inspired Howell to join the UT Dental Society and look into dentistry as a career.

After he graduated from UT, Howell enrolled in dental school at the University of Texas Dental Branch at Houston, where he studied from 2002 to 2006. During his first week of dental school, Howell decided he wanted to specialize in oral surgery. “At the time you actually did cadaver dissections, like you would go to a lab and do all sorts of cool dissections of these cadavers,” he said. “I loved it. It was so interesting, intricate and precise.”

“I got more into the surgical aspect of things, and that became my driving force and that got me through dental school,” he said. “I wanted to carry that on and sort of subspecialize.”

Once he finished dental school, Howell completed residencies at the Emory University Hospital for oral surgery and New York University Langone Medical Center for oral and maxillofacial surgery.

He wrapped up his final residency in 2010, and decided to move back to Austin. “I knew some colleagues from dental school who had set up practices in Austin, and Austin was close to home and was a big enough city that I could stay busy,” he said. “I decided to move there and have been practicing here in Austin since.”

He started at a clinic called Carus Dental, then added another clinic to his routine, Clearchoice Dental Implant Center. After the pandemic, he began working full time at Clearchoice.

Howell typically works Monday through Thursday, and his days are spent doing new patient evaluations and conducting surgery for five or six hours each day. “Basically I do dental reconstructions of either neglected teeth or dental conditions such that they can’t repair the teeth,” he said. “We remove teeth, place implants and then secure fixed prosthetics on those implants.”

Early in his career, Howell did some surgeries for hospital patients with facial trauma, but these days he’s focused on more routine surgical work, which he finds very rewarding. Most of the people who come to Howell are severely struggling with their dental health. “You see them come in depressed and somber about their appearance, and then when they leave that very day, they have a new confidence in themselves, just by their appearance,” he said. “I get to have a small part in that, and that’s pretty cool.”

While Howell loves his work as a surgeon, he’s been planning a career change in the next few years. “I really hope to spend more time on the ranch and those wide open spaces,” he said. “That’s really what I want to do.”

The ranch is a fairly small cattle operation. “My parents oversee things now, but they’re getting older,” Howell said. “They’ve been doing it by themselves, outside of intermittent help from my brother and me … The ranch has been in our family since 1886. I definitely want to continue the tradition as long as I’m around.”

Howell currently lives in Austin with his partner Madison, who works as a nurse. The two met while working at the same clinic. They live down the street from Howell’s brother Kolin and his family.

When Howell is not working, he loves finding opportunities to go fishing, hunting or spend time working outside.

Howell’s parents, Karol and Stephen Howell, live in Dublin on the ranch. His parents have been his greatest source of inspiration through the years.

“My parents have just always been grinders, always work, work, work, and I feel like I got a lot of that mentality,” he said. “Anytime you’re going to pursue further education — doesn’t matter what field it’s in — you kind of have to put your nose down and there’s gonna be long days and trials and tribulations. I really think if you have that sort of mentality instilled like it was in me, those bumps in the road are just that — bumps — and you can overcome them. So family would be the biggest inspiration for me.”

Howell was hesitant about giving advice to Dublin graduates (“When I was that age I kind of had a laissez faire attitude toward advice,” he said.) But looking back on his life so far, he settled on the following: “Just enjoy every day,” he said. “Have as much fun as you can have, work when you have to work. Do that, and you’ll be happy.”

Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen. com.