Lyric Jordan '22

Hands-on Learning

We have a heavily clinic-focused curriculum compared to other schools, which focus didactically in the beginning. When I had my initial interview here, they told me that you pick up a drill on your first day of class, and they weren’t kidding. You begin to develop your drilling skills right from the beginning, which gives you more time to build up confidence before you are seeing patients, which I think is extremely important. I know of other schools where students don’t pick up a drill until their third year because they follow medical students for the first two years, so then they are less confident when it comes to hands-on, dental-based things. I didn't want that experience. For me, competence is everything, so I chose a school that allows me to continuously build my competence. I want to feel ready to see patients when that time comes.

With all of our classes now, everything is hands-on in case-based learning to prepare. Everything that you read or learn in lecture then gets clinically applied. For us as dentists, that is going to be every day of our profession, so it is important to get acquainted with it all now.

Why UNE

The biggest thing for our dental program is that we're new, so there is room for feedback. The faculty and professional staff are willing to hear us and listen to our concerns as students. They want to morph the program to best suit our needs. I think that at more long-established programs, students don’t get that opportunity. The programs are set in their ways. I love that about UNE. I want to be able to have a part in growing a program in the right direction so that if there is something that a student is interested in, they can go after it.

Because UNE is small, faculty walk up to you on campus and say, “Hey, how’d your volleyball game go last night?” At a bigger school, you might get swallowed up, but not here. There are dental schools with 200-400 people, and that can be overwhelming. My class is 62 people. If you are looking to build personal relationships with faculty and fellow students, UNE is the place to do it. The faculty here invest so much in the students. I have personal relationships with most of my professors. In the dental field, this factor is so significant. When I am applying to residency, they will know who I am rather than just blindly writing a generic letter of recommendation or something like that.