Every prospective dental student has their reasons for why they want to become a dentist. I came to the field like many others, taken by the opportunity to help patients day-to-day by relieving their dental pain and addressing their aesthetic concerns through clinical and artistic skills.
Senior year of high school, the glory year of being at the top of the social food chain, a 17-year-old Adam Berry was playing the most sacred sport in South Dakota: ice hockey. Berry, a varsity player, was looking to score a winning goal at a home game. The crowd was cheering, the ice sleek, the players racing down the rink.
Dr. Sophia Saeed is the associate dean for patient care and professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Dentistry. She graduated from Harvard School of Dental Medicine in 2007, and then completed her general practice residency and hospital dentistry practice at the University of California, San Francisco in 2008.
Match day is an exciting culmination of hard work and months of preparation for dental students across the country. As a GPR and AEGD applicant, I was excited to see which program on my list ranked me. The time came, I opened my email and, to my shock, I saw the dreaded, “We regret to inform you…”
Dr. Jessica Meeske, senior partner at Pediatric Dental Specialists of Greater Nebraska, leads a group practice with four locations in diverse cities throughout Nebraska, serving pediatric patients who are on Medicaid. Here, she discusses the challenges and rewards of working in her practice.
As future dentists, we are often asked, “What do you want to be?” or “What do you want to do when you’re finished with school?” What I have realized is that many of us have goals that span many disciplines and interests, and it’s hard for us to choose just one (or even a couple) upon which to build a career.
Over the past few decades, there has been an increased concern of a national dental faculty shortage. The American Dental Education Association published its first report in 1999 outlining this issue and has been tracking the national shortfall since then. Between the 1990s and 2000s, the number of vacant faculty positions increased more than 50 percent.
