Pre-dental Alginate Impression Event Brings Student Groups, Dental Students, and Undergrads Together
The College’s chapters of the American Student Dental Association, the American Dental Education Association, and Peer Mentoring Group (PMG) hosted a Pre-dental Alginate Impression Event on April 5 for undergraduate students interested in dentistry.
Megh Patel, the UIC ASDA Pre-dental Chair, organized the event and invited the ADEA chapter and PMG to join in.
Karen Homsi, PMG President-Elect and an ADEA member, called the event “a huge success. This is the first event all three organizations collaborated on and we anticipate many more in the future.”
“The event was organized by ASDA with help from ADEA and PMG in an effort to give pre-dental students some hands-on experience of some of the clinical work we do as students at UIC,” Patel said. “We hope that it further strengthened their desire to pursue dentistry.”
“The event gave UIC Pre-dental Club members a hands-on experience taking dental impressions on Dentech mannequins,” Homsi explained. “It also gave undergraduate students the opportunity to interact with current first-, second-, and third-year dental students.”
Patel noted she was “fairly surprised by the level of enthusiasm shown by the pre-dental students. They seemed to genuinely enjoy taking impressions and were eager to practice them multiple times.”
The dental students, in turn, Homsi said, “were surprised by how much we’ve learned and progressed since we first learned to take dental impressions the fall of D-1 year. Our dental school journey has generally been a humbling experience and we were encouraged to share our many mishaps with the future dental students and to encourage them to keep going even when faced with difficult challenges.”
Patel feels that, “Events like this are advantageous to the College and to pre-dental students because they allow pre-dental students to have direct interactions with dental students at the College while possibly considering UIC as an option for pursing their dental education.”
“The interaction between the current dental students and the pre-dental students is essential for encouraging interest in the UIC College of Dentistry and for making dental school more tangible for applicants,” Homsi said.
Patel concluded, “The collaboration between ASDA, ADEA, and PMG encouraged further student participation.”
“By joining forces, we are able to recruit more volunteers to help out with events and to bring together the different perspectives and goals from each organization,” Homsi said.
The organizers thanked Dr. Darryl Pendleton, Associate Dean for Student and Diversity Affairs, for overseeing the meeting after hours and student Sebastian Przybylo for taking photos.
Photo Caption: College of Dentistry student groups hosted a Pre-dental Alginate Impression Event for undergraduate students interested in dentistry.