This is a unique program because we are a bachelor's degree program within a dental school. And so our students get to work with dental students and residents and all the different specialties.
We have 30 students in each class,
so that gives us the opportunity to get to know each of them on a personal level,
which I really think helps in furthering their educational goals.
Having a bachelor's degree really kind of opens up a lot of avenues for you. They can go into clinical practice working for a general practice office or a periodontist. But in addition to that, many have gone on to get a master's degrees, some in public health or other areas.
When we graduate, we'll have other opportunities. We can be a clinician, but we also would be able to maybe teach or do other things with our degree.
You get real life experience interacting with people that are unlike yourself, and you get that because we live in a major metropolitan area.
Louisville is a very diverse community. Everyone's anatomy is different, and so we'll get to have the experience and technique to be able to provide care to those people.
We have geriatric patients, pediatric patients, patients with special needs.
The students are able to go on different rotations to different clinics around the community.
Our training is multifaceted. We have a lot of didactic courses, so the students are meeting with faculty and getting your traditional lectures and active learning. In addition to that, they have a very rigorous clinical schedule.
We'll get to do our pediatric rotation at Norton Children's and we get to do some with the endo team. And we'll get to do a lot of things with medically compromised patients.
A lot of our patients are very long-term patients, where we see them every six months, so we also develop relationships with them. They actually give feedback to our students, too, which is great to have that patient perspective on your clinical training.
We have faculty from all different backgrounds, educational backgrounds as well as cultural backgrounds. I think that's really important to make the students feel welcomed and safe within the environment here.
We're all really great friends as far as the people who are in the program with me. It's difficult, but we're able to just persevere together and help each other. And there's so many professors that are willing to help us succeed.
Our faculty are very helpful, very friendly. If we need something from either academic or in a personal way, they're there for us and they want to see us succeed.
They get to do projects together, travel together to different rotation sites. You develop close friendships and you have a lot of fun together, learning together.
I feel like there's always something going on in Louisville. From downtown, there's the walking bridge. All of the Derby activities are fun as well. I have a dog, and so there's a lot of different parks that I like to go to. There's a lot of restaurants in Louisville. There's different places to go. When I moved here, that was something everyone always told me. They were like, "We are a food city... We love our food."
If you come to Louisville, you'll realize everybody likes to have fun. I consider myself part of the city. I'm in love with the city.
You'll feel very prepared when you leave here, and your employers will be very proud of your abilities and trust your ability.
The access that we have to all of our equipment and the professors and their knowledge is just so valuable, and I do think that that puts our school at the top.
