Dental Students' Perceptions of Faculty Diversity

I'm a proud mentor. 

Ms Wendan Li approached me a year ago and asked to brainstorm ideas for her research project as an ADEA Student Fellow. She was interested in faculty diversity because, as she put it, not too many of her faculty look like her. She wondered how other students felt about the impact of faculty diversity on their education and set out to ask some questions of her fellow students.  

I really enjoyed working with Wendan and the project was fascinating. The findings included several significant observations that provide some insight for dental education and validate the differences in how different groups of students view the issue. 

I will put the poster on the web soon so you can review it for yourself.  

Towards creating a national student group...forward!!

Day three here in Denver for our group working to create interest for a national dental student organization for LGBTQQAI advocates and allies. We have coalesced some interest and we're very excited!  

This evening, Monday, March 14 at 5:30 we are meeting people who are interested in the national student group at the Wxyz Lounge in the Aloft Hotel at 15th and Stout and it sounds like we will have some people show up! We've been handing out our cards and networking like mad, it feels wonderful to hear that others are interested in joining forces to take the movement even further. 

Here's hoping we get to meet and discuss with like-minded people from other schools! Stay tuned! 

Documenting Microaggression

In preparation for the upcoming presentation at the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) conference my co-presenter and I decided to ask students to share examples of microaggressions they have experienced that we would then videotape and share in the talk.  We felt this would help us explain the concept and how it can manifest in dental education.  

We received several submissions, but while the people were willing to share, everyone expressed a preference for someone other than themselves to read their comments.  Every submission received was from a female student, and all but one was from a second year dental student. 

While we anticipated receiving comments that would illustrate the concept, I didn't anticipate the collective power of hearing so many examples at one time. Particularly since they were all submitted by women I was left feeling like there's a lot of work to do to secure gender equity in dentistry. I'm very pleased to be doing this work.