THE ART OF DENTISTRY - School of Dental Medicine - Case ...

6
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
The two plan to set up in private practice
in northeast Ohio.
Not all legacies are children of dentists. In
the case of Ann Marie Adornato, it was an
older brother who preceded her at Case
Western Reserve University. Her brother
Dominick Adornato, D.D.S. ’90, the eldest
of 10 siblings, graduated from the School
of Dental Medicine when Ann Marie was
in grade school. Ann Marie, the youngest
of the ten, will graduate next spring.
Having a parent in the profession often
allows a young person to know earlier in
life if he or she wants to be a dentist. For
those students Case Western Reserve
University offers a six-year program, whereby
students take two years of undergraduate
coursework and then start dental school
in what would be their junior year. Alex
Figueroa is one of five such students in
the class of 2008. His father, who has an
orthodontics practice in Chicago which
Alex plans to join, never pressured his
son to become dentist. He didn’t have to.
Growing up around the practice, doing
Alex Figueroa practices on a mannequin in the
pre-clinical lab.
small tasks in the office and eventually
working as an orthodontic assistant was
all it took to convince the young man.
“He’s been an inspiration and a role
model,” says Mr. Figueroa of his father.
“He’s never pressured me, but he’s proud
of me. It’s something we can share.”
Because he knows he wants to go on
for postgraduate training in orthodontics,
Mr. Figueroa values the opportunity the
six-year program gave him to jump-start
his dental education. “It’s a big jump in
coursework from undergraduate to dental
school, but I expected that,” he explains.
“Case prepared me really well for the
didactic portion of dental school.”
The military is the single biggest source of
scholarship money, and another group of
students who enter dental school with a
clear picture of their future are those 12%
of the class who receive military scholarships.
Doug Holmes has a scholarship from the
United States Air Force. In addition to the
financial benefit, Mr. Holmes welcomes
the opportunity to serve his country
during his three-year postgraduate
commitment to the Air Force.
“I have not had to worry nearly as much
about how I’m going to procure, then
pay off, the many student loans needed
to support myself and my family while
in school,” explains Holmes, who plans
eventually to join the dental practice of
his father-in-law, who inspired him to
consider the profession in the first place.
“I’ve always felt the desire to serve my
country in some capacity, and I like the
fact that after graduation I will have time
to perfect my hand skills without the
added stress of immediately increasing my
procedural speed to achieve a set level of
productivity.”
The class of 2008 enjoys a rare level
of esprit de corps. Study groups are
common, and students are much more
inclined to share rather than horde
information that will be useful to the
group. “If someone makes a study
guide they will share it via the class
website,” notes Alex Figueroa. “Our
class is one of the most united classes.
Everybody wants everyone to succeed.”
Ellen Friedman adds that, having
observed the difficulty some students
in previous classes have experienced in
meeting all of their clinical requirements,
students in this class made a checklist of
all the clinical requirements and posted
it in the clinic. “When something
comes up that a patient needs to have
done, students will grab a classmate who
needs to complete that requirement
and pass the job to him or her,”
she says.
Amberlee Taylor echoes her classmate’s
sense of the class’s cohesion, which
does not end at the clinic door. “The
class is very supportive,” she says. “I
recently had to have some surgery,
and the whole class sent flowers. For a
whole week members of the class sent
us dinner.”
“They are very bright individuals who
tend to get the job done without a lot
of complaining or whining. Whether
it is playing games and hanging out in
the student lounge, or participating in
class, they always seem to get along
together and actually enjoy spending
time as a group, and that makes
teaching them a pleasure,” said Dr.
Tim Whittingham, Adjunct Associate
Professor, who has taught physiology
and biochemistry as well as practice
management to this class. “They arrived
as a group of outstanding, compassionate
individuals, and they will leave as a
family of outstanding clinicians.”